r 
 
 >/. 
 
SOME MEMORIES 
 
 OF 
 
 PARIS 
 
 BY 
 
 F. ADOLPHUS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 1895 
 

 
 * * * 
 
 / f . . 
 
 . . - * / c r. ** 
 
 A3 
 
 HENRY MORSE STEPHEN* 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 509775 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE STRF-.KTS FORTY YEARS AGO . . I 
 
 II. 29TH JANUARY 1853 . . . -39 
 
 III. TWO BALLS AT THE HOTEL DE V1LLE . . 42 
 
 IV. THE LAST DAY OF THE EMPIRE . . 58 
 V. THE ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE . 72 
 
 VI. THE ENTRY OF THE GERMANS . . 113 
 
 VII. THE COMMUNE ..... 140 
 
 VIII. MR WORTH . . . . .178 
 
 IX. GENERAL BOULANGER .... 2OI 
 
 X. THE OPERA . . . . .226 
 
 XI. INDOOR LIFE . . . . .265 
 
SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 THE changes which have come about during the 
 last forty years in the aspect of the streets of 
 Paris have been vastly more marked than those 
 which have occurred in London within the same 
 period. The two main reasons of the difference 
 are : firstly, that London set to work to modify 
 its ways at a much earlier date than Paris, and 
 that Paris still retained, at the commencement 
 of the fifties, many remainders of ancient sights 
 and customs, and still presented many character- 
 istics of past days, which, on this side of the 
 Channel, had faded out long before; secondly, 
 that, when transformation did at last begin in 
 Paris, it was far more sudden and violent, far 
 A 
 
.V.S.OME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 more universal and radical, than the mild grad- 
 ual variations we have introduced in London, 
 and that, in consequence of the utterness of that 
 transformation, an entire city was virtually 
 swept away and a new one put in its place. 
 The Paris of the First Empire was still visible 
 in 1850, almost unaltered in its essential fea- 
 tures ; old houses, old roadways, old vehicles, old 
 cheapnesses, old particularities of all sorts, had 
 been faithfully preserved, and struck both the 
 eye and the pocket of the new-comer as signs of 
 another epoch. It was not till Haussmann 
 began, in 1854, the reconstruction, not only of 
 so many of the buildings of Paris, but what 
 was far more grave of its conditions, and 
 practices, and order of existence, that the relics 
 of former life, former manners, and former econ- 
 omies found themselves successively crushed 
 out, and that the brilliant extravagant Paris of 
 Napoleon III. was evolved from the ruins. 
 
 At the commencement of the Second Empire 
 Paris was still a city of many mean streets and 
 a few grand ones ; still a city of rare pavements, 
 rough stones, stagnant gutters, and scarcely any 
 drainage; still a city of uncomfortable homes, 
 of varied smells, of relatively simple life, and of 
 dose intermixture of classes. This last element 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. 3 
 
 the intermixture of classes exercised partic- 
 ular influence on the look of the streets as well 
 as on the home contacts of the inhabitants, and 
 needs to be borne always in mind in endeavour- 
 ing to reconstitute the former aspects of the 
 place. Of course there were, in those days as 
 always, certain quarters of the town which were 
 tenanted exclusively by the poor ; but the great 
 feature was that the poor were not restricted to 
 those special quarters ; they lodged everywhere 
 else as well, wherever they found themselves in 
 proximity to their work, in the most aristocratic 
 as in the lowest districts. In almost every 
 house in the fashionable parts of Paris the suc- 
 cessive floors were inhabited by a regular grada- 
 tion of classes from the bottom to the top ; over 
 the rich people on the first and second floors 
 were clerks and tradespeople en chambre on the 
 third and fourth, and workmen of all sorts on 
 the fifth and sixth. Thorough mingling of 
 ranks under the same roof was the rule of life : 
 all the lodgers used the same stairs (in those 
 days back staircases scarcely existed) ; all 
 tramped up and down amidst the careless 
 spillings and droppings of the less clean portion 
 of the inmates. The most finished of the 
 women of the period thought it natural to use 
 
4 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 the same flight as the dirty children from above 
 them ; a lady going out to dinner in white silk 
 did not feel shocked at meeting a mason in 
 white calico coming in ; nodding acquaintances 
 between fellow-lodgers were formed when time 
 had taught them each other's faces. The effect 
 of this amalgamation in the houses stretched 
 out naturally into the streets, where, in conse- 
 quence of the nearness of their homes, the 
 various strata of the population of each quarter 
 were thrown together far more promiscuously 
 than they are now. The workers have no place 
 in the new houses, which are built for the rich 
 alone ; they have been driven to the outskirts, 
 instead of being spread, more or less, over the 
 whole town : the classes and the masses live 
 now entirely apart, in districts remote from 
 each other, and the growing hate of the masses 
 for the classes has been considerably stimulated 
 by the separation. A totally altered social 
 relationship, a far less friendly attitude and 
 feeling between the top and the bottom, has 
 resulted from the expulsion of so many of the 
 poor from their old homes. 
 
 The good streets of Paris forty years ago 
 were therefore far more generally representative 
 than they are to-day. They exhibited the 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. 5 
 
 various components of the community with 
 more abundance, more accuracy, and a truer 
 average ; universal blending was their normal 
 condition. The stranger learnt more from 
 them in a day about types and categories than 
 he can now learn in a week, for in the present 
 state of things there are, in one direction, 
 regions where a cloth coat is never beheld, and, 
 in another, districts where a blouse is almost 
 unknown. And when to this former medley of 
 persons and castes we add the notable differ- 
 ences of dress, of bearing, of occupations of the 
 passers-by from those which prevail in the rich 
 quarters now, the contrast of general effect may 
 easily be imagined. Forty years are but an in- 
 stant in the history of a nation, and yet the last 
 forty years have sufficed to produce an organic 
 change in the appearance of the streets of Paris. 
 The change extends to everything to the 
 houses, the shops, the public and private car- 
 riages, the soldiers, the policemen, the hawkers' 
 barrows, and the aspect of the men and women. 
 Nearly everything has grown smarter, but every- 
 thing without exception has grown dearer. 
 Whether the former compensates for the latter 
 is a question which every one must decide for 
 himself according to his personal view. 
 
6 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 The shops were of course inferior to what 
 they are now. The show in the windows 
 the montre, as the French call it was less bril- 
 liant and less tempting. They were, however, 
 the prettiest of their time in Europe ; and all 
 that they have done since has been to march 
 onward with the century, and, amidst the gen- 
 eral progress of the world, to keep the front 
 place they held before. Stores, in the English 
 sense, have never become acclimatised in Paris 
 (though several attempts have been made to 
 introduce them), mainly because the cooks 
 refuse to purchase food in places where they 
 can get no commission for themselves ; but the 
 growth of the Bon Marche and the Louvre, 
 which has been entirely effected within the 
 last forty years, supplies evidence enough that 
 in Paris, as in London, the tendency of the 
 period outside the cooks is towards compre- 
 hensive establishments, where objects of many 
 natures can be found at low prices under the 
 same roof. Potin, the universal grocer, sup- 
 plies even an example of success in spite of the 
 cooks. Yet, notwithstanding the competition 
 of the new menageries of goods, most of the 
 shop windows on the Boulevards and in the 
 Rue de la Paix seem to indicate that the com- 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. 7 
 
 merce inside is still prosperous. Certain sorts 
 of shops have, it is true, entirely, or almost 
 entirely, disappeared, partly from the general 
 change of ways of life, partly from the absorp- 
 tion of their business by larger traders. For 
 instance, I believe I am correct in saying that 
 there is not now one single glove-shop left in 
 Paris (I mean a shop in which gloves alone 
 are kept, as used to be the case in former times). 
 The high-class special dealers in lace, in cache- 
 mire shawls, in silks, have melted away. At 
 the other end of the scale the herboristes, who 
 sold medicinal herbs, have vanished too ; the 
 rotisseurs, who had blazing fires behind their 
 windows, and supplied roast chickens off the 
 spit, have abandoned business ; even the hot- 
 chestnut dealer of the winter nights is rarely 
 to be discovered now. Specialities, excepting 
 jewellery, are ceasing to be able to hold their 
 own ; emporiums are choking them. Measur- 
 ing the old shops all round in showiness, in 
 variety of articles, in extent of business they 
 were incontestably inferior to those of to-day, 
 though not more so than in any other capital. 
 
 The look of the private carriages was also 
 far less bright. They were less well turned 
 out ; the horses were heavier ; the servants were 
 
8 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 often badly dressed ; the driving was, if possible, 
 more careless. French carriages (like French 
 plates and knives) have always been more lightly 
 made than those of England, and at that time 
 the difference was more marked, because Eng- 
 lish carriages were more massive than now. 
 The omnibuses and cabs were dirty and un- 
 comfortable ; ancient shapes still existed, and, 
 certainly, they did not aid to adorn the streets. 
 
 In general terms it may be said that, in Paris, 
 as everywhere else but more perhaps in Paris 
 than elsewhere there was, in comparison with 
 to-day, less smartness, less alertness, less hurry, 
 and of course less movement, for the population 
 was much smaller, and the city was still limited 
 by the octroi wall. The relative absence of bustle 
 produced, however, no dulness : the streets were 
 not so noisy, not so crowded, not so business- 
 like as they have become since ; but I think it 
 is quite true to say that they were as bright. 
 
 The brightness came from one special cause, 
 from a spring of action proper to the time, 
 which produced an aspect unlike that of other 
 days. The great peculiarity, the striking mark 
 and badge, which distinguished the streets of 
 then from the streets of now, were supplied by 
 a something which was nationally proper to the 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. Q 
 
 France of the period, by a something which none 
 of us will see at work again in the same form 
 by the type of the Paris women of the time. 
 
 The question of the influence of women on 
 the aspect of out-of-door life has always oc- 
 cupied the attention of travellers. I have 
 discussed it and, especially, the comparative 
 attractiveness of European women of different 
 races and epochs with many cosmopolitan ob- 
 servers, including old diplomatists from various 
 lands, who, as a class, are experienced artistes 
 en femmes and profound students of " the eter- 
 nal feminine," and I have found a concordancy 
 of opinion on two points : one, that the women 
 of Paris have always stood first as regards 
 open-air effect (the Viennese are generally put 
 second, though lengths behind) ; the other, that 
 at no time within living memory have they con- 
 tributed so largely, so exclusively indeed, to that 
 effect as they did half a century ago. Their 
 performance indoors is not included in the 
 present matter ; it is not their talk but their 
 walk, not their home manner but their outdoor 
 maintien, not their social action in private but 
 their physical effect in public, that concern us 
 here. Their indoor life is dealt with elsewhere. 
 
 The results, to the eye of the passer-by, 
 
IO SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 were admirable; and so were the processes by 
 which the results were reached. The period of 
 Louis Philippe had been essentially honest and 
 respectable ; it had discouraged vanities and 
 follies ; it had encouraged moderation and pru- 
 dence ; it had reacted on the whole organisation 
 of the life of the time, and, amongst other 
 things, on women's dress. It was a season 
 of economy, of frank acceptance of the fruits 
 of small money, and of an astonishing handiness 
 in making the most out of little. When we 
 look back (with the ideas of to-day) to the con- 
 ditions of expenditure which prevailed then, it 
 is difficult to believe that, with such limited 
 resources, the woman of the time can have won 
 such a place in the admiration of the world. 
 I am certainly not far wrong in affirming that 
 the majority of the women of the upper classes 
 who ambled about the streets in those days had 
 not spent ten pounds each on their entire toilette 
 (excepting, of course, the cachemire shawl, when 
 there was one). The tendency of the epoch 
 was towards extreme refinement, but towards 
 equally extreme simplicity as the basis of the 
 refinement. There was no parade of stuffs, or 
 of colours, or of famous ; there was scarcely any 
 costly material ; but there was a perfume of 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. II 
 
 high-breeding and a daintiness of small niceties 
 that were most satisfying to the critical beholder. 
 Finish not flourish, distinction not display, grace 
 not glitter, were the aims pursued. The great 
 ambition indeed, the one ambition was to be 
 comme il faut; that phrase expressed the per- 
 fection of feminine possibilities as the generation 
 understood them. And they were comme il 
 faut! Never has delicate femininity reached 
 such a height, never has the ideal "lady" been 
 so consummately achieved. That ideal (by its 
 nature purely conventional) has never been 
 either conceived or worked out identically in all 
 countries simultaneously; local variety has al- 
 ways existed ; the Russian lady, the German 
 lady, the English lady, the French lady I 
 mean, of course, women of social position 
 have never been precisely like each other : the 
 differences are diminishing with facilities of 
 communication and more frequent contacts, but 
 they still exist perceptibly, and half a century 
 ago were clearly marked. The French lady of 
 the time was most distinctly herself, not the 
 same as the contemporaneous lady of other 
 lands, and the feeling of the judges to whom 
 I have already referred was that, out of doors, 
 she beat them all. I personally remember her 
 
12 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 (I was young then, and probably somewhat 
 enthusiastic) as a dream of charm, and feminine 
 beyond anything I have seen or heard of since. 
 
 Conceive the effect she produced in the 
 streets ! Conceive the sensation of strolling in 
 a crowd in which every woman had done her 
 utmost to be comme il faut ; in which, as a nat- 
 ural result, a good many looked " born " ; in 
 which a fair minority might have carried on 
 their persons the famous lines inscribed on one 
 of the arabesqued walls of the Alhambra, " Look 
 at my elegance; thou wilt reap from it the 
 benefit of a commentary on decoration " ! The 
 fashions of the time aided in the production of 
 the effect sought for; they were quiet, simple, 
 subdued ; and they were so because the women 
 who adopted them had the good sense to take 
 calm, simplicity, sobriety for their rules. 
 
 Alas ! the expression comme il faut has dis- 
 appeared from the French language, just as the 
 type and the ideas of which I have been speak- 
 ing have disappeared from French life. Some- 
 thing very different is wanted now. None but 
 old people know the ancient meaning of comme il 
 faut ; if the young ones were acquainted with it 
 they would scorn it. As the ' Figaro ' observed 
 some years ago, " la femme comme il faut est 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. 13 
 
 remplacee par la femme comme il en faut." 
 When the streets were peopled by thd- "femme 
 comme il faut," it was a privilege and a lesson 
 to walk in them. 
 
 And yet, if she could be called to life again, 
 the streets of to-day would laugh at her. Paris 
 has grown accustomed to another theory of 
 woman, and would have no applause to offer 
 to a revival of the past. The eye addicts itself 
 to what it sees each day, mistakes mere habit 
 for reasoned preference, and likes or dislikes, 
 admires or contemns, by sheer force of contact ; 
 but surely it will be owned, even by those who 
 are completely under present influences, that 
 the principles of dress and bearing which were 
 applied in Paris in the second quarter of the 
 century had at all events a value which has be- 
 come rare since. Women attained charm with- 
 out expense, but with strong personality, for the 
 reason that they manufactured it for themselves, 
 and did not ask their tailor to supply it. It was 
 a delicious pattern while it lasted, and while it 
 corresponded to the needs of a time ; but the 
 time has passed, the pattern has become anti- 
 quated, and, in every way, Paris has lost largely 
 by the change. 
 
 Unhappily there was a fault in this attractive 
 
14 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 picture ; but as it was a fault common to all 
 Europe then, and was in no way special to the 
 French, it did not strike the foreign spectator 
 of those days, because he was accustomed to it 
 everywhere. The fault was that it was the 
 fashion to look insipid ! The portraits of the 
 period testify amply to the fact, for they depict 
 the most expressionless generation that ever had 
 itself painted. Both ringlets and flat bandeaux 
 lent their aid successively to the fabrication of 
 the air of weakness. The Parisienne, with all 
 her natural vivacity, could not escape from the 
 universal taint: in comparison with what she 
 has been at other times and is to-day, there was 
 about her a feebleness of physiognomy, a sup- 
 pression of animation, and even, in certain 
 highly developed cases, an intentional assump- 
 tion of languid vacancy. But at that time no 
 one perceived this; we were all (men as well 
 as women) determined to give ourselves an 
 appearance of impassiveness, because we re- 
 garded it as one of the essential foundations 
 ofihecomme ilfaut. We see now how fatuous 
 we looked then ; but at the moment we were 
 blind to our own weakness, and simply beheld 
 in placidity of movements and of countenance 
 an indispensable adjunct of distinction. 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. 15 
 
 And yet, with all this putting on of a puerility 
 that did not belong to them, and was in utter 
 contradiction to their nature, I repeat that those 
 women stood entirely apart. Not only had they 
 admirable finish of detail in everything that 
 composed them, but they possessed, further- 
 more, what they called la maniere de s'en servir. 
 Their handling of themselves was most inter- 
 esting to study. What a spectacle it was, for 
 instance, to see one of them come out on a 
 damp day, stop for half a minute beneath the 
 doorway while she picked up her skirts in little 
 gathers in her left hand, draw the bottom tight 
 against the right ankle, and start off, lifting the 
 pleats airily beside her ! Both the dexterity of 
 the folding and the lightness of the holding 
 were wonderful to contemplate : no sight in the 
 streets was so intensely Parisian as that one. 
 I imagine that, at this present date, there is 
 not a woman in the place who could do it. 
 The science is forgotten. The putting on of 
 the shawl or mantle was another work of art, 
 so skilfully was it tightened in so as to narrow 
 and slope down the shoulders, as was the fashion 
 then. 
 
 And if the higher strata contributed in this 
 degree to the formation of the outdoor picture, 
 
l6 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 almost as much must be said of the share of 
 adornment of the streets which was furnished 
 by many of the women of the lower classes, 
 especially by what still remained of that de- 
 lightful model, the grisette. The grisette was 
 dying out at the beginning of the Second Em- 
 pire, but bright examples of her still survived, 
 and it was impossible to look at them without 
 keen appreciation of their strange attractiveness. 
 It must be remembered that the grisette con- 
 stituted a type, not a class ; she was a grisette 
 because of what she looked like, not because 
 of what she was. She was rather generally 
 well-behaved, and always hard-working. She 
 was a shop-assistant, a maker of artificial flowers, 
 a sempstress of a hundred sorts, but it was not 
 her occupation that made her a grisette; she 
 became one solely by the clothes she chose to 
 put on, and by the allure she chose to give her- 
 self. The grisette of Louis Philippe's time 
 (which was the epoch of her full expansion) 
 wore in the summer the true season to judge 
 her a short cotton or muslin dress, always 
 newly ironed, fresh, and crisp ; a silk apron ; 
 a muslin fichu; a white lace cap trimmed with 
 a quantity of flowers ; delicate shoes and stock- 
 ings (buttoned boots for women were just in- 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. 17 
 
 vented, but the grisette would have thought 
 herself disgraced for ever if she had come out 
 either in boots or a bonnet) ; and on Sundays 
 straw kid gloves with the one button of the 
 period. With her sprightly step, the buoyant 
 carriage of her head, her usually slight figure 
 and pretty feet, she lighted up the streets like 
 sunshine, and spread around her an atmosphere 
 of brightness. She had even in certain cases 
 at all events a distinction of her own, which 
 was curious and interesting to observe. She, 
 too, did her little best to be comme il faut, for 
 that was the rule of the time, and really, in 
 a sort of a way, she sometimes got very near 
 it. Of course, the girls who composed the 
 class of grisettes were unequal in their capacities 
 and in the results they achieved. Some grew 
 almost ladylike (though always with a slight 
 savour of what, in Spain, is so expressively 
 called " salt "), while others never lost the look 
 and manners of their origin. But all resisted, 
 with fair success, the influence of surround- 
 ing insipidity, and maintained, I think I may 
 say alone, amidst the universal assumption of 
 apathy, the sparkle proper to the Gallic race. 
 Alas ! the Haussmannising of Paris gave the 
 last push to the fall of the grisette. She van- 
 B 
 
l8 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 ished with the narrow streets, the paving-stones, 
 and the cheapnesses that had made her possible, 
 and though she lingered for a while, under 
 other names, in some of the provincial towns 
 (especially in Bordeaux, where I saw white 
 caps and flowers as late as 1858), no more 
 was perceived of her in Paris. The damage 
 done to the streets by her disappearance was 
 irremediable : they are almost more changed by 
 it than by all else together. 
 
 Of the men of the time I have nothing to say, 
 except that most of them simpered and thought 
 themselves delightful. 
 
 The first place was taken by the women, so I 
 have put them first. The second place in the 
 effect of the streets belonged, I think, to the 
 itinerant traders of the moment, most of whom 
 have faded out of being. 
 
 The twenty thousand men who lived by keep- 
 ing the inhabitants supplied with water were 
 certainly the most practically useful of all the 
 vanished workers of that time, and they were 
 omnipresent, for their casks and buckets formed 
 an element of the view in every street. Water 
 was not laid on into the houses ; it was carried 
 up each day to every flat, even to the sixth floor, 
 when there was one, by a member of the corpor- 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. IQ 
 
 ation of the porteurs cTeau. Dressed invariably 
 in dark-green or blue velveteen, they tramped 
 heavily and slowly up the staircases, with a 
 load, carried from a shoulder bar, of two great 
 metal pails full to the brim. Worthy fellows 
 they generally were, strong as buffaloes, plod- 
 ding on an unending treadmill. I often asked 
 myself whether they ever thought. In the 
 streets their casks on wheels (hand-dragged) 
 stood at every door, and children used to watch 
 with delight the perfect unbroken roundness 
 of the arched stream of water which, when 
 the plug was drawn, rushed out of the cask, 
 through a brass -lined hole, into the bucket 
 which stood below it in the roadway. The 
 stream was exactly like a curved staff of glass, 
 and so absolutely smooth that it seemed motion- 
 less. The porteurs d'eau have gone, like the 
 grisettes ; they have been replaced by pipes. 
 But while they still existed, while the question 
 of what was to become of them if their work 
 was suppressed was being discussed, the popula- 
 tion almost took their side, and, from habit, 
 appeared to prefer the old buckets to the new 
 pipes. Those water - carriers had existed for 
 centuries ; they were a component part of the 
 life of Paris ; it seemed both cruel and ungrate- 
 
20 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 ful to take their bread away, for the sake of 
 a so-called progress which very few persons 
 understood, and of which nobody felt the need ; 
 so the philanthropic cried out against the 
 change. I remember being asked to go to a 
 meeting of protestation got up by a lady, who 
 canvassed all her friends. But the buckets 
 were eradicated all the same, only the extinc- 
 tion was effected gradually; the men found 
 other work, and when the community became, 
 at last, acquainted with the advantages of 
 " constant supply," it ceased, thanklessly, to 
 mourn over the giants in velveteen, and won- 
 dered, indeed, how it could ever have endured 
 them. 
 
 The chiffonniers, again, have lost their trade 
 at least it has become so totally modified that 
 they no longer pursue it in its ancient form. 
 The waste and dirt from every house used to 
 be poured out into the street, before the front 
 door, each evening at nine or ten o'clock, and 
 the chiffonnier, with his lantern and his hook 
 in his hands and his basket on his back, arrived 
 at once and raked the heaps over, to see what 
 he could find in them. But it became forbidden 
 either to throw the refuse into the street or 
 to bring it out at night. It was prescribed 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. 21 
 
 that it should be carried down in the early 
 morning in a box, which is placed, full, at 
 the door, and is emptied before nine o'clock into 
 the dust-carts which go round each day. The 
 chiffonniers, therefore, have no longer the oppor- 
 tunity of picking over the dirt, for it has ceased 
 to offer itself in an accessible form : they have, 
 for the most part, to carry on their trade after 
 the refuse is discharged from the carts at the 
 depots, and, consequently, have almost dis- 
 appeared from the streets. They cannot be 
 regarded as a loss, for they were, of necessity, 
 dirty and bad smelling, and looked, as they 
 prowled about with their dull lantern in the 
 dark, like spectres of miserable evilness. But, 
 all the same, they were thoroughly typical of 
 old Paris. 
 
 There were in those days a quantity of vagrant 
 traders about the streets, charlatans, marchands 
 ambulants, and faiseurs de tours ; the police were 
 merciful to them, and allowed them to carry 
 on their business almost in liberty. Two of 
 them were celebrated : an open-air dentist 
 whose name I have forgotten, and Mangin 
 "1'illustre Mangin," as he called himself the 
 pencil-seller. All Paris knew those two. 
 
 The dentist drove about in a four-wheeled 
 
~ SOME riinOTra or PARIS. 
 
 cart of gutgUMS tolfjaiji, with a platform in 
 
 ^ > 
 
 -. _ - : - 1- ~- .:r. :.i..".: f vr; v^r:;r::;f^. 
 
 a. boy, and always 
 
 L-.--f.-i-::. :: f;.:.~ : .: . r.r r ;.5r ..5 
 
 to thuvB Ac ycfis of die patients. I saw that 
 
 f.ntuince of the Avenue 
 sees; hot although 
 
 I passed, many rows cf people ap- 
 I was assured) that he never 
 
 -_~_ _ -~ ~ . ~ 1 ^. ,~. ~ nir * . \ ~ ~ .' . r r : 
 
 tibey shrieked. I think he charged 
 five sows (twufKAce-lulfpeiiiijr) for dragging oat 
 a tooth; which proves that, as I have already 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. 23 
 
 observed, prices were lower in those days than 
 they are now. 
 
 But if I shunned the dentist I never missed 
 a chance of listening to Mangin, who really was 
 a prodigious fellow. It was said that he had 
 taken a university degree, and the varied know- 
 ledge which he scattered about in his unceasing 
 speeches gave probability to the rumour. Any- 
 how, whatever had been his education, his out- 
 pour of strange argument, his originality and 
 facility, his spirit of a propos, his rapidity of 
 utterance, and, above all, the perpetual new- 
 ness of his fancies, were positively startling. 
 Of course his talk was often vulgar ; but it 
 must be remembered that it was addressed to 
 a street mob, most of whose members loved 
 coarseness. Like the dentist, he paraded about 
 the town in a cart, but his vehicle was dark, 
 and had a high back. Also, like the dentist, 
 he had an organ and a drum, but they were 
 only used in the intervals of his discourses. 
 He had a day and an hour for each quarter 
 of the town, and was always awaited by an 
 eager crowd. The spot where I habitually 
 saw him was in the roadway by the side of 
 the Madeleine. He was then a man of about 
 forty-five, with a great brown beard, pleasant- 
 
24 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 looking, thick. He wore a huge brass helmet, 
 with immense black feathers, and a scarlet 
 cloak, which he called his toga. His unhesi- 
 tating command of words, his riotous fertility 
 of subjects and ideas, were such that, though 
 I listened to him frequently, I never heard 
 him make the same observation twice. He did 
 assert continually that he was a descendant of 
 Achilles, and that he wore that gentleman's 
 uniform, but that declaration formed no real 
 part of his speeches ; it was a mere official 
 indication, and had in it none of the character 
 of an argument. I think I may say that his 
 harangues were absolutely fresh each day. I 
 do not pretend to remember more than a few 
 of the phrases I have heard him utter, but I can 
 give a fair general idea of his style, including some 
 of his own words. Here is an example : 
 
 Ladies, gentlemen, children, enemies, and friends ! 
 Buy my pencils. There are no other pencils like 
 them on earth or in the spheres. Listen ! They 
 are black ! You imagine, of course, in the immen- 
 sity of your ignorance it is wonderful how ignorant 
 people are capable of being, especially about pencils 
 that all pencils are black. Error ! Criminal 
 error ! Error as immense and as fatal as that of 
 Mark Antony when he fell in love with Cleopatra. 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. 25 
 
 All other pencils are grey ! Mine alone possess the 
 merit of being truly black. They are black, for 
 instance, as the hair of Eve. Here I $ause to ob- 
 serve that it is a general mistake to suppose that 
 Eve was a fair woman. She was as dark as if she 
 had been born in the Sahara, of Sicilian parents. 
 I was in the Garden of Eden with her, and I ought 
 to know. I was, in that stage of my transmigration, 
 the original canary bird, and looked at her as I 
 flew about. I was saying that my pencils are 
 black. Listen ! They are black, not only as the 
 hair of Eve, but black as that hideous night after 
 the earthquake of Lisbon ; black as the expression 
 of countenance of Alexander the Great (you are 
 aware, of course, that he was an irritable person) 
 when he found there was no sugar in his coffee; 
 black as the waves which gurgled over Phaethon 
 when he fell headlong into the Po ; black as your 
 sweet complexion might be, my dear (to a girl in 
 the crowd), if it did not happen to be, on the con- 
 trary, as pink as my toga, as white as my soul, as 
 translucent as the truth of my words. But black- 
 ness friends, enemies, and children is only one 
 of the ten thousand excellences of my unapproach- 
 able pencils. They are also unbreakable, absolutely 
 unbreakal^e. See ! Watch ! I dash this finely cut 
 pencil-point on to this block of massive steel. The 
 strength of my arm is such (I inherit it, with other 
 classical peculiarities, from my ancestor, the late 
 Achilles) that I dent the steel ; but I cannot break 
 the point. You smile ! It wounds me that you 
 
26 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 smile, for thereby you imply a doubt, just as Solo- 
 mon smiled while he wondered which of the two 
 women was the mother of the baby. Come up and 
 verify the fact if you do not believe. There is the 
 mark on the steel; there is the pencil-point. The 
 point is sharpened, not blunted, by the fierceness of 
 the blow. One sou, five centimes, for a single 
 pencil ! Ten sous, fifty centimes, for a dozen ! At 
 those prices I give them away, out of pure love of 
 humanity. Ten sous a dozen ! Who buys ? Yes, 
 you, sir? Yes. One dozen, or two dozen, or ten 
 dozen ? Very good, two dozen. You see, my 
 children, that the entire universe comes to buy my 
 pencils. This gentleman, who has just taken two 
 dozen, has travelled straight from the celebrated 
 island of Jamaica (where humming-birds are culti- 
 vated on a vast scale in order to distil from them 
 the sugar they contain) for the express purpose of 
 obtaining a supply. He heard of them out there 
 I mention for the information of such of you as 
 may not be acquainted with the geography of the 
 oceans, that Jamaica is on the coast of China, and 
 therefore very distant and he has travelled half- 
 way round the world to come to me to-day. Don't 
 blush, sir, at my revelation of the grandeur of your 
 act. It is a noble act, sir; well may you and I 
 be proud of it. Yes, my little beauty, two dozen ? 
 You, my child, have not arrived by steamer, rail- 
 way, or balloon from the celestial waters of Pekin, 
 where the population is born with pigtails, and feeds 
 exclusively on its own finger-nails, which are grown 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. 27 
 
 very long for the purpose you have arrived only 
 from the heights of Montmartre ; but your merit also 
 is great, for you have faith in my pencils. Who 
 else has faith in my pencils? Black, unbreakable, 
 easy to cut, easy to suck, easy to pick your teeth 
 with, easy to put behind your ear, easy to carry in 
 your pocket, delightful to make presents with. Who 
 buys my pencils to offer them to her he loves ? 
 Yes, young man. Good ! Strike the drum, slave ; 
 strike the fulminating drum, the very drum that re- 
 sounded at the taking of Troy it was sent to the 
 relations of Achilles by Ulysses, and has come down 
 as an heirloom in the family in honour of this 
 noble youth, this brilliant Frenchman, this splendid 
 subject of the Emperor. He offers my pencils to 
 her! I drink to her I At least I would if I had 
 anything to drink. Ten sous for twelve of such 
 pencils as mine ! It's absurd ! It pains my heart 
 to sell them. I have to tear myself away from them 
 as the wild horses of Attila tore his prisoners to 
 pieces. The boy who does not buy my pencils is 
 destined to a life of misery; he will be kept in on 
 Sundays ; he will be brought up principally on dry 
 bread, but butter and jam will be danced goadingly 
 before his eyes. When he becomes a man he will 
 fail in everything he attempts, and will surfer from 
 many hitherto unknown diseases. His horse, if he 
 has one, will possess a tail like a rolled-up umbrella, 
 and knees the shape of seventy- seven. His cook 
 will put hairs into his soup. As for the girl who 
 does not buy my pencils, her fate will be more 
 
28 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 awful still. Never will she find a husband ! What, girls ! 
 you hear the fearful fate that awaits you, and you do 
 not rush up instantly to buy ? Rush, if you wish to be 
 mothers ! Rush, if you long to be happy, beautiful, and 
 rich ! That's right ; two, three, four, who long to be 
 happy, beautiful, and rich. The more pencils you 
 buy, the happier, the more beautiful, and the richer 
 you will be. How many shall we say? Twenty 
 dozen each ? I make a reduction for all quantities 
 over ten dozen. What? One? One? One single 
 pencil? For one sou? And you expect to be 
 happy, beautiful, and rich for one sou ? Even in 
 this glorious land of France, even in this country 
 of delights, that result is impossible, quite impossible. 
 Take a dozen at all events ; even then you will only 
 be relatively happy, moderately beautiful, and not at 
 all rich. Joy, loveliness, and wealth increase with 
 pencils. Yes, sir, two dozen. To you, sir, I do 
 not promise handsomeness, but I predict success, 
 especially with ladies. My pencils render men irre- 
 sistible with women. Now that you have them in 
 your hand, try the effect on that tall girl next to 
 you ; it will be visible at once. Ten sous a dozen ! 
 Who buys? I pause. I take needed rest, but only 
 for an instant. Slave, sound the roaring drum, re- 
 volve the handle of the pealing organ, in order to 
 divert the admiring crowd while I repose. 
 
 And he proceeded to suck liquorice. 
 
 I have given this speech at some length, 
 because it paints not only a man but a situation. 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. 29 
 
 How utterly other from the conditions of to-day 
 must have been the state of the streets,, of Paris 
 when it was possible to shout out all that 
 twenty yards from the Boulevard, and to go on 
 shouting every day, without being arrested by 
 the police as a nuisance. 
 
 When Mangin disappeared (his eclipse oc- 
 curred, so far as I can remember, somewhere 
 about 1856) he left vacancy behind him. He 
 was, like Napoleon, unreplaceable. 
 
 Another curious artist, of whom I often heard, 
 had gone out of sight before my time. He 
 painted portraits at fairs and in the streets, and 
 a placard at the door of his booth bore in large 
 letters the inscription : 
 
 PORTRAITS ! 
 PORTRAITS ! 
 
 RESSEMBLANCE FRAPPANTE . . 2 francs. 
 RESSEMBLANCE ORDINAIRE . . i franc. 
 AIR DE FAMILLE . . . .50 centimes. 
 
 It seems that the air de famille was the most 
 largely ordered of the three degrees of likeness, 
 and that scarcely anybody went to the expense 
 of a ressemblance frappante. This man made no 
 speeches ; but the wording of his advertisement 
 was worth much talking. 
 
30 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 One more exhibitor will I describe a juggler. 
 He came every Tuesday afternoon to the south- 
 east corner of the Place de la Madeleine, just 
 outside the shop where Flaxland, the music- 
 dealer, is now established ; and there, in his 
 shirt-sleeves, he conjured and played tricks. I 
 remember only one of his devices, but that one 
 sufficed to make him a sight of the time. He 
 asked the crowd for pennies (pieces of two sous, 
 I mean) ; he put five of them into his right 
 hand, played with them, tossed them a few 
 times in the air, and then suddenly flung them 
 straight up to a height which seemed above the 
 house-tops. He watched them intently as they 
 rose, and, as they turned and began to fall, he 
 opened with his left hand the left pocket of his 
 waistcoat, and held it open about two inches, 
 I should think. Down came the pennies, not 
 loose or separated from each other, but in what 
 looked like a compact mass. Fixedly he gazed 
 at them, shifting his body slightly, very slightly, 
 to keep right under them (he scarcely had to 
 move his feet at all), and crash came the pile 
 into the pocket of his waistcoat ! He repeated 
 the operation with ten pennies, and, finally, 
 he did it with twenty ! Yes, positively, with 
 twenty ! It almost took one's breath away to 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. 31 
 
 hear the thud. Never did he miss at least, 
 never did I see him miss and nev^r did the 
 pennies break apart or scatter ; they stuck to 
 each other by some strange attraction, as if they 
 had become soldered in the air. There was 
 evidently something in the manner of flinging 
 that made them hold steadily together. After 
 wondering each time at the astounding skill of 
 the operation, I always went on to wonder what 
 that waistcoat could be made of, and what that 
 pocket could be lined with, to enable them to 
 support such blows. The force, the dexterity, 
 and the precision of the throwing to some 
 sixty feet high, so far as I could guess and the 
 unfailing exactness of the catching, were quite 
 amazing : the pennies went up and came down 
 in an absolutely vertical line. The juggler was 
 said to have made a good deal of money by the 
 proceeding ; people talked about it, went to see 
 it, and gave francs to him. He, too, had no 
 successor. 
 
 There were plenty of other mountebanks of 
 various sorts about, but they had no widespread 
 reputations, and did not count as recognised 
 constituents of the street-life of the time. Man- 
 gin, the dentist, and that juggler held a place 
 amongst the public men of their day like Pere 
 
32 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 coupe toujoiirs, who had sold hot galette for half a 
 century in a stall next door to the Gymnase 
 Theatre ; like the head-waiter at Bignon's (in 
 the Chaussee d'Antin days, of course), whose 
 name I am ungrateful enough to have forgotten ; 
 like the superlatively grand Suisse of that date 
 at the Madeleine, who was said to have been 
 christened Oswald, because the washerwoman, 
 his mother, like many others of her generation, 
 had gone entirely mad over Corinne. How long 
 ago all that does seem ! And how utterly other 
 than the Paris of to-day ! 
 
 The Champs Elysees too which represented 
 then the concentrated essence of the life of the 
 streets how changed they are ! Then, every- 
 body went there ; all classes sat or strolled there. 
 Now, the place is half deserted in comparison 
 with what it was, although the lower part was 
 then a desert of dust or mud, according to the 
 weather, while now it is a real garden ; and the 
 upper portion was bordered, at many points, by 
 grass-fields, in which I have seen cows feeding. 
 The planting of the lower half (the trees of 
 course were old) was effected somewhere about 
 1856, with the stock of a Belgian horticulturist, 
 which was bought en bloc for the purpose. It 
 constituted one of the most charming improve- 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. 33 
 
 ments of the Haussmann period, for it gave a 
 look of delightful greenness and prettiness to 
 what had been a gravelly waste. And yet, not- 
 withstanding their beautification, the Champs 
 Elysees, as a public resort, have not maintained 
 the comprehensively representative character 
 they possessed forty years ago. They have 
 been affected partly by the caprices of fashion, 
 but, like all the rest of western Paris, their com- 
 position and their aspect have been altered 
 mainly by the almost total separation of the 
 various strata of inhabitants of which I have 
 already spoken. It must be remembered that, 
 in the days of which I am telling, the women of 
 the lower classes were, in great part, ornamental, 
 and that not only were they worthy many of 
 them, at all events to take a place in the crowd 
 which assembled every summer evening between 
 the Place de la Concorde and the Rond Point, 
 but that their presence bestowed a special char- 
 acter on the effect of the crowd, for it proved 
 that all the layers of population had learnt to 
 mix naturally together in open-air union. The 
 mixture did not shock the patrician eye, and it 
 pleased the plebeian heart ; it did something to 
 soothe and satisfy the self-respect and conscious- 
 ness of rights of a considerable section of the 
 c 
 
34 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 people, and led them to look with a certain 
 friendliness on the rich. In the Champs Elysees 
 the mingling was more complete even than in 
 the streets, for the double reason that it had 
 more space to show itself, and that the act of 
 sitting down side by side, which was impossible 
 elsewhere, seemed to bestow a certain intimacy 
 on it. Aristocracy lost nothing ; democracy 
 gained a good deal ; a political effect of utility 
 was achieved. 
 
 In those days everything came to pass in the 
 Champs Elysees. Everybody went there to be- 
 hold everybody else. All processions paraded 
 there so much so, indeed, that one of the first 
 stories I heard on my arrival in Paris was that, 
 when the end of the world was announced for 
 some day in May 1846, an enterprising speculator 
 set up trestles and planks under the trees, and 
 offered to let out standing-room, at five sous 
 a-head, "to view the end of the world go by." 
 The certainty that everything was to be seen 
 there from the funeral of the earth to the 
 wedding-party of an oyster-girl going out to 
 dine at a restaurant at Neuilly was sufficient 
 of course to bring together all the starers of 
 Paris (and there are a good many of them). 
 The true difference between the starers of then 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. 35 
 
 and the starers of now is that in those times the 
 Champs Elysees were regarded, not only as the 
 centre of Paris, but as a spot to live in, whereas 
 now they have become a simple passing place, 
 like any other merely one of the ways that lead 
 to the Bois. The Bois itself was a tangle of 
 disorder, with few paths in it, and was acces- 
 sible through a sort of lane turning out of the 
 present Avenue Victor Hugo, which was then 
 a narrow road called, if I remember right, the 
 Route de St Cloud. There was no Avenue du 
 Bois de Boulogne, nor any other Avenues round 
 the Arch of Triumph (except, of course, the 
 Avenue de Neuilly) ; the Champs Elysees ex- 
 isted alone, and gained naturally in importance 
 by their oneness. It was not till the late fifties 
 that the Bois was laid out as it is now, and that 
 the lakes were dug. When that was done the 
 world began to go out there, and ceased to stop 
 in the Champs Elysees. 
 
 The Boulevards, again, were far more import- 
 ant features in the life of the place than they 
 are to-day : then, life was a good deal concen- 
 trated; to-day, it is thoroughly spread out. The 
 building changes which have been effected in the 
 Boulevards have been enormous, but the modifi- 
 cations in their social aspect have been greater 
 
36 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 still. Very few of the ancient landmarks survive 
 in them ; but the crowd is even more altered 
 than the houses. The chosen lounging spots are 
 not the same, and even the art of lounging has 
 itself assumed another character. An acquaint- 
 ance I made on my first visit to Paris proposed 
 to me seriously to teach me la maniere de fldner, 
 and spoke of it with reverence, as if it were a 
 science of difficult acquirement, needing delicate 
 attention and prolonged study. He told me he 
 had passed his life (which had been a long one) 
 in the careful application of the highest prin- 
 ciples of lounging, that he had explored its 
 secrets in many countries, and that he had 
 arrived at the conclusion that there are only 
 two capitals where it is carried to its noblest 
 possibilities Madrid and Paris. He put Naples 
 third, but with the express reserve that the 
 lounging there is simply animal, and has no 
 elevation in its composition. He did admit, 
 however, that in Madrid and Naples the entire 
 population knows instinctively how to lounge, 
 while in Paris the faculty is limited to the 
 educated. To-day it is in Paris itself that the 
 lounging has lost "elevation"; it has become 
 as "animal" as at Naples, but without the 
 excuse of the sun which, there, bestows so 
 
THE STREETS FORTY YEARS AGO. 37 
 
 much justification on its animality. Parisians 
 no longer lounge with the sublime contentment 
 which was so essentially characteristic of the 
 process forty years ago. In those days the 
 mere fact of being on the Boulevard sufficed 
 not only to fill the true flaneur with a soft re- 
 ligious joy, but aroused in him a highly con- 
 scious sentiment of responsibility and dignity : 
 he seemed, as he strolled along, to be sacrificing 
 to the gods. Alas ! it is the mere material act 
 of lounging, without adoration for the sacred 
 place where the act is performed, which satisfies 
 the actual mind. The distinction between the 
 two conditions, between the "elevation" of the 
 one and the "animality" of the other, is self- 
 evident and lamentable. If my old friend were 
 not dead already, the sight, assuredly, would 
 kill him. He declared and it was an opinion 
 generally held then that, for a true Parisian, 
 the only portion of the Boulevard which was 
 really fit for the due discharge of the holy duty 
 of lounging was the little space between the Rue 
 du Helder and the Rue Lepelletier, which, with 
 fond memories of other days, he persisted in 
 calling by its former momentary name of " Bou- 
 levard de Gand " (for the reason that, during 
 the Hundred Days, Louis XVIII. ran away to 
 
38 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 Gand). The bottom of the steps of Tortoni 
 formed the hallowed central spot. When I 
 first saw Paris, that spot inspired me, under 
 the guidance of my old friend, with a certain 
 awe ; but I must add that the awe did not 
 last, and that the more I knew of the spot the 
 less I revered it. 
 
 It has been said of French Governments that 
 "plus 9a change, plus c'est la me'me chose;" 
 but, however true that may be of Ministries, 
 it is absolutely untrue of outdoor Paris, which 
 has altered so totally that it has ceased to be 
 the same at all. Perhaps it might be a good 
 thing for France if the Government were to 
 change as completely. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 JANUARY 1853. 
 
 I WAS crossing the Place de la Concorde. 
 thinking of nothing, when suddenly I became 
 aware that carriages, accompanied by a small 
 crowd, were advancing slowly towards me from 
 the Avenue Gabriel. The marriage of Napoleon 
 III. with Mademoiselle de Montijo was to be 
 solemnised that day in the Cathedral of Notre 
 Dame. The carriages I saw coming formed the 
 procession of the bride. 
 
 I placed myself at the edge of the pavement, 
 on the west side of the obelisk, just where the 
 guillotine stood during the Terror, and looked. 
 
 Almost at a foot's pace the carriages drove 
 past me, two yards off. In one of them, which 
 seemed to be all glass, I caught sight of an 
 intensely pale, intensely anxious face. I pre- 
 sume there were surroundings ; there may have 
 
40 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 been white satin, orange flowers, jewels ; there 
 may have been other persons : but I saw absol- 
 utely nothing and was capable of seeing nothing 
 except the absorbing presence of those dream- 
 ily apprehensive eyes and those pallid cheeks. 
 That expression of vague heajt-sinking blotted 
 out every detail of attendant circumstances ; 
 it left no room in me for any other perception 
 whatever. 
 
 As I gazed the vision vanished ; it had en- 
 dured for only a dozen seconds, and yet it had 
 stamped itself permanently inside my head ; 
 it has remained there, clear, sharp, abiding. 
 I have seen that face often since, in youth, in 
 age ; in pride, in pain ; illumined by the glitter 
 of a meteoric throne, worn by disaster, grief, and 
 exile, but never have I looked at it without 
 the accompanying memory of its almost spectral 
 apparition to me on 2gth January 1853. 
 
 I was told next day (by enemies of the Empire) 
 that Mademoiselle de Montijo expected to be 
 assassinated on her way to church, and that 
 the expression I had observed was the natural 
 consequence of the alarm she felt. But I pro- 
 tested against that explanation. I felt instinc- 
 tively that I had beheld something else than 
 mere material fear, something other than simple 
 
2QTH JANUARY 1853. 4! 
 
 dread of the present. At the moment, it is true, 
 I regarded the expression of that face^merely as 
 an involuntary testimony to the vanity of suc- 
 cess ; I had then no motive for attributing to it 
 any other meaning. In later days, however, it 
 assumed to me the very different aspect of a 
 revelation of failure. Looking back to it now, 
 as it floated past me forty-two years ago, on the 
 exact spot where Marie Antoinette was executed, 
 I discern what I believe was really in it awe 
 of the future, augury of woe. 
 
 I have forgotten many other sights, but that 
 one stands vividly before me in its sadness. To 
 me the recollection of it means that, at the very 
 moment when the ex-Empress was on her way 
 to Notre Dame to put on a crown, I chanced 
 to see her sorrows foreshadowed to her. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 TWO BALLS AT THE HOTEL DE VILLE. 
 
 UNDER the Second Empire the balls at the Hotel 
 de Ville counted amongst the bright festivi- 
 ties of Europe. Sovereigns, society, the many 
 foreigners in Paris, the upper employes of the 
 Municipality, and le haut commerce met at them ; 
 they were admirably done ; the great gallery 
 was magnificent ; everybody who possessed a 
 uniform wore it ; the show was very brilliant, 
 and, notwithstanding the extreme variety of 
 guests, scarcely anybody looked ugly. Nowhere 
 could there be found a more interesting ex- 
 hibition of intermingled classes, more credit- 
 able manners on the part of the unaccustomed 
 portions of the invited, more cordial acceptance 
 of momentary mixture on the part of the rest. 
 Those balls supplied special occasions for con- 
 templating groupings of very diversified social 
 
TWO BALLS AT THE HOTEL DE VILLE. 43 
 
 categories and of very various nationalities, all 
 in their best clothes. There was no political 
 character about them, nor did they present any 
 popular peculiarities in the ordinary meaning of 
 the word ; but they were as royal, aristocratic, 
 and international as they were commercial, 
 bureaucratic, and French. Nearly all the 
 monarchs and princes of the time and their 
 wives and daughters too showed themselves 
 successively in that gallery, and every land was 
 represented in it by notable men and women. 
 
 The ball of 22d August 1855, at which Queen 
 Victoria and Prince Albert were present, may 
 fairly be taken as a typical example. It was 
 not different from the others, but it was as good 
 as any of them, and it presented, in their fullest 
 degree, all the special characteristics of the 
 gatherings at the Hotel de Ville. I do not re- 
 member with any exactness what happened at 
 it, for each fete was so like the others that they 
 have run into a confused blend in my recollec- 
 tion ; but errors, if I make them, will be of no 
 importance as regards effect and outline, for 
 whatever was true of one ball was true of an- 
 other, if not specifically, at all events generi- 
 cally. 
 
 The ride to the Hotel de Ville was weari- 
 
44 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 some. The queue of carriages began at the Place 
 de la Concorde, and the invited had to go on 
 thence at a foot's pace for at least an hour, with 
 the irritation of seeing the possessors of a coupe 
 file drive straight on at a trot. I explain that a 
 coupe file is a card given each year by the Paris 
 police to official persons, to enable them on all 
 occasions to go on unstopped to their destin- 
 ations. The result was that the immense 
 majority disembarked at last in an ill-temper. 
 
 After passing through the splendid inner 
 court, where, under the arch of the grand stair- 
 case, was the famous transparent cascade the 
 water rippling, trickling, splashing down high 
 steps of deadened glass lighted brightly from 
 behind, amidst masses of variegated plants and 
 hanging flowers the crowd marched up the 
 broad ascent, lined with soldiers at attention. 
 At the top, on the great landing, it found itself 
 face to face with the givers of the ball, the 
 Municipal Council and the Prefect of the 
 Seine, who, with a forest of palm-trees behind 
 them, stood there to receive their arriving 
 visitors. And on that landing there was a 
 curious little sight to see. 
 
 The Council, which in those days was nomi- 
 nated by the Government, not elected by the 
 
TWO BALLS AT THE H6TEL DE VILLE. 45 
 
 local Radicals as it is now, formed a semicircle 
 (forty of them, when they were all ther$). They 
 had a uniform of their own, proper to them- 
 selves ; it was, if I remember rightly, brown 
 embroidered with silver ; the Prefect in the 
 middle with a coat of another colour, to show, 
 I presume, that he was governmental, not mu- 
 nicipal. The entire party bowed, collectively, 
 cohesively, and concentrically, though with 
 irregularities of inflexion, to every person who 
 appeared ; and, as people poured up-stairs in an 
 unceasing mob, the bowing kept the brown 
 uniforms in a condition of permanent oscilla- 
 tion, at the rate, I should imagine, of about 
 fifteen bows a minute. It was a very creditable 
 gymnastic performance, especially as most of 
 the forty acrobats were decidedly old, and all 
 eminently respectable well-to-do gentlemen of 
 solid position, bankers, manufacturers, pro- 
 fessors. That side of the process constituted a 
 feature in itself, and was alone worth going to 
 one of the balls to behold. But the return bows 
 of the entering crowd were immeasurably more 
 remarkable. I think, indeed, that they pre- 
 sented the most striking specimens of unfortu- 
 nate salutations that it has been given me to 
 view. The operation had to be performed with 
 
46 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 extreme rapidity because of the pressure from 
 behind, so that all that could usually be man- 
 aged by most people was to curve hurriedly 
 towards some vague point of the crescent, 
 which was only visible to ordinary eyes as a 
 suddenly appearing and very indistinct choco- 
 late line, and leave the rest unnoticed. But 
 this insufficient solution did not satisfy the 
 more earnest and less experienced section of the 
 guests ; they thought it was their stern duty to 
 try to deliver their bow rotatorily, so as to include 
 the entire arc in the manifestation of respect. 
 Now an elliptically-shaped salute addressed to 
 about seventy feet of brown coats, with or with- 
 out a glance to each of them, cannot be com- 
 pleted under fifteen seconds at the lowest com- 
 putation, and never were fifteen seconds allowed 
 to any one for the purpose. The executant was 
 invariably upset by a push from somewhere, 
 tumbled over his own legs, and staggered away 
 humiliated, recognising that he had attempted 
 more than it was in his power to get through 
 with either grace or safety. The women man- 
 aged better than the men ; their little curtsies, 
 though rapid, were often well achieved. Some 
 people, women as well as men, marched nobly 
 past the brown-and-silver coats without taking 
 
TWO BALLS AT THE HOTEL DE VILLE. 47 
 
 the slightest notice of them, which, though 
 ungrateful, was very practical and perhaps par- 
 tially excusable. 
 
 When the Imperial and Royal guests arrived 
 (which was always rather late, so as to allow 
 time for the ordinary public to gel in first), 
 the Prefect and the Council went down to 
 meet them at the door, and of course from that 
 moment there was no more bowing ; for which 
 reason timid persons, who feared the operation 
 on the landing, started late, so as not to reach 
 the ball until the Royalties were in. People 
 looked somewhat at the sovereigns when they 
 entered; but, for two reasons, staring of that 
 sort is relatively little practised in Paris. The 
 first reason is, that the French, taken as a 
 nation and not counting the individual excep- 
 tions, have learned that Royal personages are 
 not different from themselves ; the second, that 
 snobbishness in France has but slight national 
 existence, it is to be found in society, but not 
 amongst the masses, and even in society there 
 is comparatively little disposition to glare at 
 monarchs. It must be remembered, in explan- 
 ation of this, that there is no nationally recog- 
 nised upper class, as in England, to admire, 
 to imitate, and to attain. 
 
48 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 The sovereigns took their place on a dais in 
 the middle of one side of the great gallery (when 
 there happened to be no sovereigns that dais 
 was occupied by the notabilities of the evening, 
 whoever they might happen to be). They sat 
 there in pre-eminence until the moment came 
 for the procession through the rooms. Scarcely 
 any one followed them in their walk, except the 
 Court and the official people; they were left 
 in such peace as is accessible to Royalty. 
 There was, however, a curiosity to see Queen 
 Victoria; indeed, she was more looked at, 
 with the single exception of the Emperor of 
 Russia in 1867, than any other royal visitor 
 to Paris in my time. The English were, 
 strange to say, rather popular in France just 
 then (it was during the alliance of the Crimean 
 war). Her Majesty was the only English 
 reigning sovereign who had ever come to 
 Paris ; she was a woman ; her presence was 
 regarded as an act of high courtesy and as 
 of good augury. 
 
 The Emperor and Empress and their guests 
 left early ; but their departure produced no 
 effect upon the ball; it went on as before. 
 There was no Court etiquette, no rules of 
 special behaviour towards monarchs any more 
 
TWO BALLS AT THE HOTEL DE VILLE. 49 
 
 than towards other people ; all that was ex- 
 pected was that the latter would be respectful 
 towards the former. The only difference after 
 they had withdrawn was that, the slight dis- 
 traction of Royal presence having ceased, the 
 crowd was able to bestow its exclusive attention 
 on what was, undeniably, and in everybody's 
 opinion, the most marked national character- 
 istic of the Hotel de Ville balls. That char- 
 acteristic was the show of uniforms. 
 
 Never anywhere was there brought together 
 such a prodigious variety of many - shaped, 
 many-coloured, and much-embroidered coats. 
 Nearly all the presentable male costumes of 
 the world must have appeared at one or other 
 of those balls ; everybody, from all parts of 
 the earth, came to Paris in those days; every- 
 body went to the Hotel de Ville ; everybody, 
 as I have already said, wore a uniform if he 
 had one, and on the Continent all functionaries 
 possess raiments distinctive of their office. No 
 Court assemblage supplied, or does supply, such 
 a varied pageant, for the simple but decisive 
 reason that, with the exception of the diplo- 
 matic body, very few foreigners are to be seen 
 at Courts. At the Hotel de Ville of Paris, 
 on the contrary, the gathering was extraordin- 
 
 D 
 
50 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 arily cosmopolitan. It included specimens of 
 everybody from everywhere, and presented a 
 collection of male attire of which nobody has 
 seen the like before or since. 
 
 I often heard discussions as to the relative 
 effect produced by each one of the hundreds 
 of diversified equipments, and I remember that 
 the common verdict gave the front place to 
 the uniform of the Hussar generals of the 
 Austrian army (the same opinion has been 
 expressed about it wherever else I have en- 
 countered it). The tunic and breeches are 
 scarlet, embroidered abundantly with gold ; 
 the dolman white, laced with gold and edged 
 with sable ; the busby is in sable. Nothing 
 more superb has been imagined,, thus far, as 
 a covering /or man. At St Petersburg there 
 is an amazing exhibition of Asiatic uniforms, 
 some of them most resplendent and effective ; 
 yet when they are transplanted into Western 
 Europe they lose the naturalness they possess 
 in Russia, do not produce the same effect of 
 being in their right place, and assume a more 
 or less barbaric aspect. But that Austrian uni- 
 form preserves the same distinguished character 
 wherever it is beheld. Many of the civil uni- 
 forms were bright and well conceived, especially 
 
TWO BALLS AT THE HOTEL DE VILLE. 51 
 
 the fifteen or twenty sorts of them that were 
 worn by the divers officials of the Imperial 
 Court; but, as a rule, in that exhibition the 
 soldiers had certainly the best of the clothes. 
 I was much diverted at the Queen's ball (at 
 least I believe it was at that one) by the 
 agitating sensation provoked by a kilted High- 
 lander. Wherever he went a mob accompanied 
 him, looking gapingly but disapprovingly at his 
 legs, and wondering whether the police would 
 turn him out for impropriety. The women in 
 particular were curious to see him, but shocked 
 when they did so; they crowded up to him, 
 gazed, and then retired discreetly. He had 
 undeniably the success of the evening, so far, 
 that is, as bewildered staring can be said to 
 constitute success. 
 
 The mass of other caparisons dwells as a 
 promiscuous fog in my memory. I can describe 
 none of them. I remember only and vaguely 
 that every hue was represented ; that, for in- 
 stance, there were at least fifteen competing 
 shades of red, from the pink burnoose of a 
 Morocco sheikh, through all the hues of scarlet, 
 crimson, and amaranth, to the dark claret of 
 the Empress's chamberlains. But, misty as is 
 my recollection of details, I can repeat with 
 
52 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 certainty that the display, as a whole, consti- 
 tuted a prodigious glitter, and that there was 
 ample justification for the popular impression 
 that the uniforms were always the particular 
 show of those balls. 
 
 And yet there was in the air around those 
 coats the inevitable sensation (inevitable be- 
 cause it is felt on every occasion when such coats 
 are looked at) that the clothes blotted out the 
 man. The wearer needs to look particularly 
 some one if he is to succeed in maintaining 
 his personality in spite of obtrusive trappings. 
 Colours, gold lace, stars, ribbons, and other 
 varied glories, assert themselves at the expense 
 of the body within them ; even that admirable 
 Austrian uniform requires a wearer as smart 
 as his clothes if he is to avoid being effaced 
 by them. Our eye is caught by the outside ; 
 the inside is relatively invisible. When, under 
 such circumstances, we look for the inside, we 
 have sometimes difficulty in perceiving any in- 
 side at all. The black clothes of every night, 
 hideous as they are, have at all events the 
 merit, by their uncompeting dulness, of leaving 
 the individual in full visibility ; but uniform is 
 always more or less disguising and produces 
 the contrary result ; and the more magnificent 
 
TWO BALLS AT THE HOTEL DE VILLE. 53 
 
 the uniform, the more contrary is the result, 
 which is wounding for the vanity of mankind. 
 Shabby clothes obliterate a man in one direc- 
 tion; smart ones obliterate him in another. 
 
 By the side of the men the women at those 
 balls lost their usual supremacy of effect. They 
 were simply what they always were, in evening 
 dresses ; they offered no special spectacle ; the 
 men supplied that all by themselves. We were 
 accustomed to see women decolletees, but we 
 were not accustomed to see such a mass of men 
 from all parts of the world in their gala cos- 
 tumes. The effect of uniforms must indeed 
 have been vigorous to deaden, as it did most 
 assuredly at those strangely intermingled balls, 
 the counter-attraction of women. 
 
 An amusing particularity of those composite 
 festivals was that they supplied occasions, which 
 were rarely found otherwise, for foreigners to 
 get introduced to a few French people, and I 
 think the French rejoiced in the accident even 
 more than the foreigners. A French girl was 
 not inconsiderably flattered to find one of the 
 gorgeous strangers, whom she had been con- 
 templating with an admiration approaching to 
 awe, brought up to her as a candidate for a 
 dance. Whether he was an officer of Spanish 
 
54 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 halberdiers, a black Brunswicker, a Hungarian 
 in velvet, a Z-ekhen hussar, a Papal Noble 
 Guard, or a Danish Secretary of Legation in 
 scarlet (the Danes are the only diplomatists who 
 wear red), he was equally curious to her, and 
 equally welcome. I cannot say if she would 
 have had the courage to stand up with a High- 
 lander; I doubt it. I have heard pleased talk 
 in French families of the acquaintances made 
 in those days at the Hotel de Ville. Often 
 were mothers graciously pleased to observe : " It 
 is extraordinary ; but really some of these for- 
 eigners are very agreeable, and their get-up is 
 superb. In France we have no uniforms like 
 theirs." 
 
 It is scarcely to be expected that such balls 
 will ever be seen again. They \Jere only ren- 
 dered possible by the combination of the peculiar 
 conditions of life under the Second Empire with 
 the momentary absence of all international hates. 
 They were a product of circumstances which 
 have passed away with the period which begot 
 them, and which, from the present look of 
 things, do not seem likely to return. The whole 
 civilised world was anxious to come to them; 
 for while they offended no opinions and shocked 
 no prejudices, they pleased even the most ex- 
 
TWO BALLS AT THE H6TEL DE VILLE. 55 
 
 perienced eyes, and to beginners seemed in- 
 credibly brilliant. On looking back to other 
 festivities at which I have assisted 4 in many 
 lands, I unhesitatingly put first those balls at the 
 Hotel de Ville of Paris, and I consider it a privi- 
 lege to have seen them and to have the memory 
 of them. They did not offer, of course, the 
 stately ceremonial or the finished pageantry of 
 balls at the great Courts, but they were far more 
 generally representative, and far more widely 
 cosmopolitan, than any of the fetes that are 
 usually seen in palaces. 
 
 Since those days I have been present at one 
 more ball at the Hotel de Ville. Not in the 
 same building, alas ! for it was burnt in the 
 Commune of 1871, but in the new edifice which 
 has been built since on the same site, and in 
 which the actual Municipal Council has given 
 a certain number of entertainments to its elec- 
 tors. After much hesitation I was induced to 
 go to one of them on the 2d of April 1887, an d 
 I have never ceased to regret that I was weak 
 enough to yield to the pressure of the friends 
 who urged me to accompany them. 
 
 I will not attempt to describe what I beheld ; 
 all I will say is that there is not one single point 
 in common between the balls of then and the 
 
56 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 balls of now, save the fact that both are tech- 
 nically described by the same title of " Balls at 
 the Hotel de Ville." It would be both pitiful 
 and ridiculous to give an exact account of the 
 present after what I have been saying of the 
 past. 
 
 Neither society nor foreigners were to be seen 
 at the new ball, and, excepting a few French 
 officers, there was not a single man in uniform. 
 The type of the visitors was so utterly altered 
 that I stood wondering how it was possible that 
 mere changes of political circumstances could 
 have brought about so prodigious a transforma- 
 tion. The simple substitution of the Republic 
 for the Empire was not sufficient to explain it, 
 for though strangers no longer come to Paris, 
 there are still delightful-looking French people 
 in quantities. The true causes of the revolution 
 are the transfer of municipal authority to an 
 intensely radical body, to the consequent intro- 
 duction of a totally new category of guests, and 
 to the absence of all persons of social position 
 who, even if they were invited, would refuse to 
 go. I came away at the end of half an hour 
 with a feeling of something like disgust, but 
 with the consolation of recognising that the 
 strange sight at which I had been glancing had 
 
TWO BALLS AT THE HOTEL DE VILLE. 57 
 
 not affected my impressions of other days ; 
 that those impressions, notwithstanding what 
 I had just seen, remained unweakened," 1 and that 
 neither the brilliancy of their old colouring nor 
 the clearness of their old outlines had been 
 affected by the terrible contrast of the spectacle 
 which claims nominally to replace them. 
 
 To the Radicals of to-day a "ball at the 
 Hotel de Ville " may mean such a gathering as 
 I was led to on 2d April 1887, but to the world 
 at large it still signifies, and probably will al- 
 ways signify, a ball of the Imperial period. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE LAST DAY OF THE EMPIRE. 
 
 THE story of the 4th of September 1870 has 
 been told so often and so minutely that it would 
 be useless to relate it again for itself; there is 
 nothing left to tell. Furthermore, my own re- i 
 collections of it are very slight, for I beheld t 
 almost nothing of what happened. Like other 
 people, I have read up the tale since, but I am 
 only acquainted with the greater part of it at 
 second hand. If I speak of the day here, it is 
 not, therefore, because I have any particular 
 knowledge of its details, but for the totally dif- 
 ferent reason that it produced in me a tremen- 
 dous sensation of ruin which I have never 
 forgotten, and which has placed it in the very 
 front of my memories of Paris. Of that sen- 
 sation alone have I anything to say. 
 
 The period before Sedan had been leadenly 
 
THE LAST DAY OF THE EMPIRE. 59 
 
 oppressing. The air was full of a constantly 
 augmenting sickly apprehension. The "light 
 heart " with which the war began Had utterly 
 disappeared. The battles round Metz had 
 crushed out the optimism of the French ; alarm 
 had taken root and grown ; the possibility of 
 complete defeat was, so far, admitted by no one ; 
 the yearning to conquer was passionate, poig- 
 nant, convulsive ; but there had crawled into 
 every mind a wearying strain, a restless quiver- 
 ing, an undefined fearfulness of the future, which 
 were reflected in almost every face. To make 
 matters still more painful, it was felt that, 
 amidst that terrible anxiety, the news supplied 
 was unreliable : the daily statements in the 
 papers were more or less fantastic and conflict- 
 ing ; even the official telegrams posted up at the 
 Ministry of the Interior in the Place Beauvau 
 were regarded with suspicion. The struggle 
 between gnawing fear and desperately persistent 
 hope, between the new crushing evidence of facts 
 and the old deeply-rooted national conviction that 
 France could not be beaten, was cruelly fierce. 
 
 The position of foreigners had become diffi- 
 cult. It was scarcely possible for a stranger, 
 whatever were the reality and the strength of 
 his sympathies for France, to view the situation 
 
60 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 as the French did. Every single Frenchman 
 with whom I talked during those gloomy days 
 was convinced that the successes of the Prus- 
 sians were due to " treachery," though nobody 
 defined, or attempted to define, the meaning or 
 the application of the word ; and, additionally, 
 every one insisted that it was the duty of every 
 other country to take the side of France. How 
 could a foreigner agree with such ideas ? And 
 yet it was essential to put on an appearance 
 of agreement with them in order to avoid quar- 
 rels : it was not permitted to be neutral ; it was 
 obligatory to talk in the same tone as the 
 French under penalty of being regarded by 
 them as an enemy. This made the situation 
 infinitely disagreeable ; but there is no denying 
 that, all the same, notwithstanding its incon- 
 veniences and risks, it was even more infinitely 
 interesting. 
 
 I was surrounded by a confused mixture of 
 "patriotic anguish" (the phrase was first used 
 by M. Rouher), of fanatical suspicions, of gasp- 
 ing longings for victory, of chafing rage against 
 the monstrous injustice of fate and against the 
 perfidious indifference of other nations. All tem- 
 pers were worried, fractious, querulous. I had 
 before me the spectacle of a nation heart-sick. 
 
THE LAST DAY OF THE EMPIRE. 6l 
 
 Such was the general state of mind in which 
 Paris reached Saturday the 3d of September. 
 The battle of Sedan had been fought two days 
 before ; but though it appears certain, from 
 evidence produced since, that the Government 
 was acquainted with the issue on the night of 
 the 2d, it was not till the morning of the 3d 
 that private telegrams from London and Brus- 
 sels brought the first rumours of a great reverse ; 
 not till four in the afternoon that the lamentable 
 despatch to the Empress arrived 
 
 L'armee est defaite et captive ; moi-meme je suis 
 prisonnier. NAPOLEON. 
 
 not till seven in the evening that the whole 
 awful news burst out. 
 
 I had been ill that day and had been obliged 
 to stay indoors. No one had come to see me, 
 which was natural, for most of my acquaint- 
 ances had left Paris. I cannot, however, pre- 
 tend that I regretted their absence, because, for 
 the reasons I have just given, I had begun to 
 shrink somewhat from seeing French friends. 
 The result was that I learned nothing on the 
 Saturday night, and went to bed before sun- 
 set, unwell and anxious, but ignorant. 
 
 On the Sunday morning a servant woke me 
 with the news of Sedan, which had been raging 
 
62 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 over Paris for twelve hours without my knowing 
 one word about it. It scared me utterly. A feel- 
 ing dashed into me that there was an end of 
 France. It came with a devastating rush ; no 
 reasoning led me to it ; it was there in me. 
 I had expected disaster, but not such disaster 
 as that. The reality surpassed all imagination. 
 There seemed suddenly to be nothing left. The 
 Emperor and his whole army taken ! Never shall 
 I forget the desolating alarm for France that 
 seized me. Of course it was exaggerated 
 (especially when looked at from this distance 
 and under present conditions). Of course, if I 
 had been able to think coolly, and had given 
 myself time to do it, I should have recognised 
 that France herself existed still ; but, under the 
 pulverising circumstances of the moment, I 
 really think I had some cause for that first im- 
 pression. The blow seemed more and more 
 stunning as each second passed. I had not 
 conceived that political demolition could pro- 
 duce an even greater moral effect than material 
 destruction. 
 
 I read the papers throbbingly, rolled about 
 in bed, stared blankly and blackly at the future, 
 and passed through a strangely painful quarter 
 of an hour. 
 
THE LAST DAY OF THE EMPIRE. 63 
 
 Then, naturally, my ordinary ways reasserted 
 themselves, and, though I was still ill, I got up 
 
 v* 
 
 to dress, go out, and see what was happening. 
 
 The instant I was outside my door I was 
 conscious of a change in the aspect of Paris. 
 Something had come into it since the day 
 before. The atmosphere was other. My street 
 (which, though wide enough for a great thor- 
 oughfare, led to nowhere in particular and was 
 usually empty) was not calm ; groups, unknown 
 in ordinary life, stood about in it, discussing, 
 disputing, gesticulating. In the nearest gather- 
 ing I perceived a concierge I knew, so I stopped 
 and asked him 
 
 " What are people saying ?" 
 
 " Oh, all sorts of things," he answered, inco- 
 herently ; " some talk one way and some an- 
 other; some pity the Emperor; some say he 
 has betrayed us and has sold us to William, 
 and that it serves him right to be caught him- 
 self; some think the Prussians will be in Paris 
 to-morrow, and that we shall all be prisoners." 
 
 " And what is going to happen to-day ? " I 
 inquired. 
 
 Instead of replying, my acquaintance looked 
 timidly round the circle, leaving it to one of 
 the others to mutter savagely 
 
64 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 " They are coming down from Belleville ; 
 there will be a fight on the Boulevard, and 
 there will be no Empire left to-night. Curse 
 the Emperor ! " 
 
 Not one of them had a word for France ! 
 They had apparently but two subjects of 
 thought themselves and the Emperor; the 
 country did not seem to count. 
 
 In the next street, where there was more 
 movement, there was also more bitterness ; the 
 people were still mainly of the same class, peace- 
 ful folks, above the position of artisans, with 
 interests to protect, habitually stagnant, not 
 revolutionary, not politicians, still less soldiers, 
 accustomed to leave everything to the Govern- 
 ment; but that morning there was a heaving 
 amongst them of which I should not have 
 imagined them capable. There were visibly 
 increasing sneerings at the Emperor, there 
 were rejoicings over his fall ; but, nevertheless, 
 there were still many in the streets during those 
 first hours of the day who were only softly sad, 
 and who had the courage to say they pitied him. 
 It was not until the afternoon that the entire 
 population, under the influence of events and 
 of example, turned unanimously against him 
 and poured out universal imprecations on his 
 
THE LAST DAY OF THE EMPIRE. 65 
 
 name. I noticed again and again, and every- 
 where, that no one spoke of France.. I appeared 
 to be alone in my intense preoccupation about 
 her future, and I well remember the feeling ol 
 strange solitude I experienced in those crowds, 
 where, so far as I could judge from the signs 
 on the surface, no one seemed to share my 
 anxiety for the country herself. Perhaps it 
 was precisely because, not being directly con- 
 cerned, I was able to view the situation as a 
 whole more easily than the French could. 
 
 Not an allusion was made to the Empress. 
 She was not liked. At that moment of supreme 
 distress no one, within my hearing, manifested 
 any interest in her, or any care as to what might 
 become of her. 
 
 I went slowly on from street to street, joining 
 often in the groups, listening to the talk, observ- 
 ing always the same contradictory symptoms, 
 the same compound of relatively peaceful dis- 
 tress, of comparatively tranquil irritation, and 
 of profound personal disquietude, with an ever- 
 enlarging proportion of ferocity and of cries for 
 vengeance against Napoleon III. 
 
 At the entrance to the Grand Hotel I met two 
 acquaintances, both terribly depressed, both cer- 
 tain that, notwithstanding the position of France, 
 
66 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 the Emperor would be dethroned at once, both 
 utterly indifferent to the political future. It was 
 not their business to form another Government, 
 and they said they did not care what Govern- 
 ment came in provided only it could beat the 
 Prussians. For that one result they did sigh 
 passionately ; but their longings did not appear 
 to extend further. When I ventured to suggest 
 that it was not quite the moment to effect a 
 revolution, and that such work as that had 
 better be left until the enemy was no longer 
 looking on, they replied that they did not care, 
 provided only some one would win a battle. At 
 the moment I thought their tone and attitude 
 special to themselves, but afterwards I had 
 reason to suppose that they represented fairly 
 well the condition of opinion of a large portion 
 of the educated classes. Nearly all of them had 
 lost sight of every consideration save victory 
 alone. 
 
 They told me that, in all probability, the mob 
 from Belleville and the National Guards from 
 everywhere, would not reach the Chamber until 
 one or two o'clock, and that nothing riotous 
 could be expected until then. So, as I was 
 weak and tired, and as I had satisfied my im- 
 mediate longing for contact with outside news 
 
THE LAST DAY OF THE EMPIRE. 67 
 
 and outside impressions, I thought I had had 
 enough. My sensations (which \. remember 
 vividly) formed a confused jumble of horror 
 of the realities of the instant, of extreme dis- 
 tress for France, of wondering anxiety as to 
 what would happen next, and of a beginning 
 of hesitation as to what I had better do. For 
 the first time I asked myself whether, under 
 the new circumstances which surrounded me, 
 it was either worth while or wise for me to 
 stop on in Paris. I was catching from the 
 French some share of their preoccupation about 
 their individual fates. 
 
 Sadly I smouldered homewards. I determined 
 not to look on at the coming catastrophe. I was 
 not tempted to see history of that sort made. 
 I had always gone to view sights, no matter 
 of what nature. The disposition to be an eye- 
 witness of everything that happened had been 
 strong in me; but on that 4th of September 
 I shrank from the spectacle of destruction, for 
 I fancied I could hear the German armies laugh- 
 ing with delight at the work French hands were 
 performing at such a moment and under such 
 conditions. I determined to shut my eyes, 
 wilfully, in order not to see. I could not face 
 the smash, for it meant, as I judged it under 
 
68 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 the impressions of the instant, the irreparable 
 fall of France. 
 
 Yet after lunch the old habit thrust itself 
 forward again, and notwithstanding my illness 
 and my repugnance, I dragged myself back 
 miserably to the Boulevard. In my then state 
 of mind these fluctuations of feeling and of 
 action appeared to me quite natural. 
 
 It was about four o'clock when I reached the 
 top of the Rue de la Paix, just in time to see the 
 return of a part of the crowd which had been 
 urging on the National Guards to attack the 
 Chamber. I heard from eager mouths around 
 me that a Government of lawyers was to be 
 proclaimed at the Hotel de Ville. The mob 
 yelled frantically as it marched on ; the weather 
 was superbly fine ; that such a scene of national 
 disgrace (as I regarded it) should be enlustred 
 by so gorgeous a daylight appeared to me to be 
 a desecration of the sun. The sight before me 
 was politically and morally so dismal that I 
 could not pardon the sky for shining on it. 
 
 That the Empire should be turned out with 
 dishonour was inevitable, necessary, and just; 
 but not while fighting was going on, not on the 
 morrow of a vast defeat. The sentence on it 
 should have been pronounced at another and 
 
THE LAST DAY OF THE EMPIRE. 69 
 
 a fitter moment. The stream that France was 
 wading through was too wide, too nauddy, and 
 too flooded for her to stop to swop horses in the 
 middle of it. I could not forgive the half-dozen 
 deputies who on such a day thought fit to seize 
 the Government for their own use. I cared 
 nothing for the Empire, but that it should be 
 kicked off by the French themselves under the 
 blows and before the eyes of the victorious 
 enemy, appeared to me to constitute a still further 
 fall for France. The demerits of the Empire 
 did not exculpate those who made the unpatri- 
 otic revolution of the 4th of September. The 
 arraignment of the Empire should have been 
 reserved until the last German had left the soil. 
 How infinitely more solemn it would have be- 
 come ! And assuredly there is no reason for sup- 
 posing that the war would have been continued 
 either less vigorously or more unsuccessfully. 
 
 The mob kept pouring on, tumultuous, 
 delighted, as if it had performed a noble act. 
 I was told that it varied its pastimes by occa- 
 sionally hunting down "a spy," but I saw 
 nothing of the process. It is true I was half- 
 dazed and beheld dimly. The destinies of 
 France had become dear to me from long 
 contact with her, and I was possessed by an 
 
70 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 extraordinarily intense perception of her ruin. 
 I was in 'a waking nightmare of wreckage, 
 crashing, and annihilation. I could not have 
 supposed it possible to get face to face with 
 such a sentiment of havoc and outrage. 
 
 There was additionally, since that morning, 
 the new sudden fear that Paris would be be- 
 sieged ! Nobody, so far, had thought of that 
 as a realisable possibility. Paris besieged ! The 
 capital of the earth beleaguered! "La mile, 
 lumiere" dragged down to the level of a mere 
 fortress and invested ! Where was the world 
 going when such a thing could be ? 
 
 That was, however, the future, the near future 
 perhaps, but still the future. The present was 
 sufficient in itself; the present was Sedan, the 
 disappearance of the Empire in the gutter, and 
 the triumph of the Radical barristers. I wished 
 to look no further for the moment. 
 
 I longed to be alone. The crowd, the shouts, 
 the seizure of power by a faction in consequence 
 of a national defeat, and, almost more than all, 
 the wanton, remorseless, mocking sunlight, star- 
 ing blazingly at the scene as if it approved and 
 applauded, offended me to the bottom of my 
 heart. It was a time for mourning, not for 
 noise ; for sadness, not for glare. 
 
THE LAST DAY OF THE EMPIRE. 71 
 
 The moral impression of which I have not 
 ceased to speak hung massively upon me. I 
 turned away into back - streets, where there 
 were shadows in harmony with my thoughts. 
 I crawled home, laid down, and felt wretched. 
 I knew, at last, what it is to see a nation 
 sink. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. 
 
 WHEN the siege of Paris was drawing to its 
 end, and when lamentable reports of the star- 
 vation that was going on inside were circu- 
 lating about Europe, everybody took it for 
 granted that, for a time after the opening of 
 the gates and until regular supplies could be 
 obtained once more, a considerable portion of 
 the population would continue to be in serious 
 straits for food. The stocks in the place were 
 known to be exhausted ; the railways had been 
 much damaged, and required to be got back 
 into working condition before traffic could be 
 reorganised and provisions brought in ; and it 
 was imagined, additionally, that a good many 
 people would have no money to pay for bread. 
 For these various reasons it seemed certain 
 to outsiders that a period of serious want would 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. 73 
 
 have to be bridged over. The gaze of the 
 world was fixed on Paris ; everybody felt per- 
 
 P* 
 
 sonal sorrow for it ; the deepest interest in the 
 griefs of its inhabitants was everywhere ex- 
 pressed. In England, as elsewhere, the talk 
 of the time was full of sympathy ; and in Eng- 
 land though not elsewhere active measures 
 were taken to show the reality of that sympathy. 
 The Lord Mayor of London called a meeting 
 at the Mansion House, as he usually does 
 when a great suffering claims alleviation, ap- 
 pealed to the British public to help Paris, and 
 opened a subscription. With the product of 
 that subscription (which was large), food was 
 bought in quantities in anticipation of the sur- 
 render, and was sent off to Havre and Dieppe, 
 in the hope that, by effort and good luck, it 
 might, somehow, be got up to Paris in time 
 to be of use. 
 
 The situation appeared to be made worse 
 still by one of the conditions of the capitula- 
 tion, which stipulated that no food for Paris 
 should be drawn from any of the portions of 
 France then occupied by the Germans, the 
 reason being that the conquerors needed for 
 themselves all that those portions could pro- 
 duce. This restriction signified that, as all 
 
74 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 the Northern Departments, up to the Belgian 
 frontier, were in German hands, and as German 
 regiments had stretched out beyond Normandy 
 in the west, and beyond Burgundy in the south, 
 supplies for the capital could only be practi- 
 cally sought in distant departments. But the 
 Germans, very generously, did not enforce this 
 clause, and allowed food to be bought for Paris 
 wherever it could be found, even at Versailles, 
 where they really required it for their own 
 people. The result was that, as the railways 
 were patched up wonderfully fast, stocks got 
 in with a relative abundance and a positive 
 speed which astonished the beholders. 
 
 It happened in reality, after all this appre- 
 hension, that Paris had scarcely starved at all, 
 in the strict sense of the term. Everybody 
 who had money to spend was able, throughout 
 the siege, to obtain necessaries in sufficient 
 quantity, and even certain luxuries. The star- 
 vation that was so much talked of by com- 
 miserating Europe rarely meant, for the mass 
 of the population, any absolute absence of food. 
 I did not hear of one proved case of death 
 from hunger ; but, of course, I do not pretend 
 that none occurred, for, even in ordinary times, 
 people in large agglomerations die frequently 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. 75 
 
 from want. Throughout the siege, too, charity 
 was at work with open hands ; the richer 
 people contributed abundantly to the* relief of 
 the needs around them. There was discomfort 
 for the wealthy ; there was scantiness for the 
 middle classes ; there was privation for the 
 poor; all sorts of unaccustomed nourishment 
 were utilised ; but there was always food of 
 some sort, though generally inferior in quality, 
 and in many cases insufficient in quantity. A 
 certain number of persons, especially women, 
 had, towards the end, great difficulty in ob- 
 taining bread at all, because at that time it 
 had to be fetched, with tickets, from the bakers' 
 shops a process which involved hours of wait- 
 ing in the cold. Various forms of dyspepsia, 
 and even of organic diseases, were brought on 
 by bad eating ; inflammations of the chest were 
 numerous ; but, so far as I could learn on the 
 spot (and I took a great deal of trouble to 
 inquire, at the time), most of the damage done 
 was to persons of previous weak health. I 
 must say, also, that the consequences did not 
 always manifest themselves at once, in many 
 cases they appeared months afterwards ; deaths 
 from illnesses caused by the siege were heard 
 of more frequently perhaps in 1872 than in 
 
76 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 1871. The men were better off than the 
 women, because, during the whole duration of 
 the investment, nearly all of them could get 
 two francs a-day as National Guards, while the 
 women could earn nothing, and suffered, con- 
 sequently, more. There were, of course, many 
 cases of exceptional distress ; many persons 
 were unable to digest, or even to swallow, the 
 abominable bread that was supplied to the 
 public during the concluding weeks (those who 
 could afford it did their baking at home with 
 flour they had laid up at the beginning, or else 
 ate rice instead of bread) : of course the scarcity 
 of fuel and the bitter cold of the winter of 
 1870 added to the suffering; but that suffering, 
 though occasionally intense, was not universal, 
 and, especially, it never presented the character 
 of true siege famine. Another fortnight would 
 have produced that famine ; but the capitu- 
 lation was signed in time, and, taking the 
 population as a whole and putting aside the 
 exceptions, Paris went through only the earliest 
 stages of the consequences of a prolonged in- 
 vestment. Occasional instances of acute misery 
 cannot be counted for anything under such 
 circumstances and amidst so vast a population. 
 Considering what war really is, what it really 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. 77 
 
 means, and what it may entail, Paris made 
 scarcely any acquaintance with its limitless 
 horrors. There was a good deal of Illness, but 
 no general starvation properly so-called. For a 
 city of brightness and pleasure the trial was 
 very painful and humiliating; but for a be- 
 leaguered fortress it could scarcely be regarded 
 as a true siege. As a moral and material hardship 
 inflicted suddenly on people who had always 
 lived in insouciance, the imprisonment was ex- 
 tremely worrying and painful ; but as a military 
 operation, involving possibly all the frightful 
 followings of battle, it induced, comparatively, 
 very few woes at all. The situation might have 
 been so immeasurably worse than it was, that 
 it cannot be regarded as having been thorough- 
 ly bad. 
 
 At the immediate moment, however, nothing 
 of this truth was known ; the facts only came 
 out by slow degrees. The exact contrary, in- 
 deed, was believed outside. And that was why 
 the world wept for Paris, and why the English 
 of the period desired to aid in mitigating her 
 sorrows. 
 
 The capitulation and the armistice were 
 signed about 27th January, and on 4th Feb- 
 ruary (if I remember correctly) Colonel Stuart 
 
78 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 Wortley and Mr George Moore arrived in 
 Paris as delegates of the Lord Mayor's Com- 
 mittee, bringing with them a first small supply 
 of stores. They set themselves at once to pre- 
 pare for the distribution of " the English gifts " 
 that were following them, formed a Paris Com- 
 mittee to help in the work, and were good 
 enough to ask me to join it. I had just come 
 in from Versailles, where I had passed the siege 
 time : I was very curious to see with my own 
 eyes the state" of Paris, and was particularly 
 glad of this opportunity to examine, in a special 
 and practical form, the condition of things"' 
 inside. The work on that Committee made me 
 acquainted with details which I could scarcely 
 have got to know in any other way, and my 
 recollection of it enables me to tell some of 
 the points of a story' which at trfe time attracted 
 much attention, but which is now, I presume, 
 almost forgotten. 
 
 Our Committee had nothing to do with the 
 transport of the stores to Paris; its function 
 was limited to their distribution when they got 
 there. I knew, therefore, nothing, except in 
 a very general way, about the difficulties of car- 
 riage and the labour of surmounting them; I 
 remember only that great energy was employed, 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. 79 
 
 that much credit was due to those who had 
 charge of the forwarding from the ports, and 
 that Colonel Wortley and Mr Moore were 
 indefatigable. Their first act was to organise 
 depots all over the town, especially in the poorer 
 districts. I forget how many there were, but 
 I am under the impression that the number 
 was between a dozen and twenty. There were, 
 frequently, delays in conveying the stores from 
 the railway station to the depots, because of 
 the scarcity of horses ; and the unpacking 
 and division into portions for each applicant 
 took up a good deal of time. If we could have 
 given a whole cheese to one, a whole ham to 
 a second, a box of biscuits to a third, and a 
 bag of coffee to a fourth, and have left them 
 to settle the sharing between them, we should 
 have got on much faster; but, as it was, we 
 were often forced to keep the people waiting 
 while hundreds of heaps of varied provisions, 
 in a transportable condition, were prepared in 
 rows. When once that was done, the handing 
 out went on very fast. At each depot a staff 
 was installed, and, during the earlier days, 
 the task of giving went on uninterruptedly, 
 even at night. Paris knew within twenty-four 
 hours that food was to be had for the asking, 
 
8o SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 and Paris came in crowds to ask for it. The 
 crowds, in themselves, supplied no reliable testi- 
 mony of the existence of great want, for they 
 would appear again to-day, in equal numbers, 
 if food were once more offered for nothing ; but 
 in their aspect and their composition there were 
 details which showed, in some degree at least, 
 that the nature of the occasion was special. 
 Again, the food was, of necessity, distributed 
 haphazard, and the process in itself revealed 
 little on the surface ; but on the rare occasions 
 when it was possible to penetrate into it, to 
 learn the secrets of the starvelings, and to dis- 
 cover the personal causes which led them to 
 come and beg, it assumed a totally different 
 character, and became at moments intensely 
 interesting. 
 
 For many days I passed a considerable por- 
 tion of my time in the depots, or outside them 
 talking to the waiting mob, and I heard a quantity 
 of tales of suffering, the majority of which were, 
 I fancy (judging from the manner of telling, 
 or from the nature of the statements), mainly 
 imaginary, while some few of them were, I 
 daresay, painfully true. I repeat, however, 
 before narrating stories, that I regarded the 
 authentic ones as exceptions, and that the 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. 8l 
 
 famine provoked by the siege alone, and not 
 by general or accidental causes, was not so 
 serious as the European public had supposed. 
 Other witnesses may, possibly, hold a precisely 
 contrary opinion : I speak solely for myself, 
 after a careful study of the situation, so far 
 as I could measure it, and after diligent inquiry 
 amongst those who were best placed to know 
 the facts. 
 
 The first depot opened was somewhere near 
 the Church of Notre Dame des Victoires ; and, 
 as it was the first, the rush to it was great. 
 The column of people was indeed so long that 
 it stretched, six or eight thick, almost a quarter 
 of a mile away, past the Bourse. Several of us 
 went down on the first evening and found men 
 and women standing or sitting on the pave- 
 ments, a few with wraps, many without. Vari- 
 ous classes were represented amongst them : 
 some looked not only respectable, but almost 
 as if they belonged to the lower middle strata ; 
 the vast majority, however, were the poorest 
 of the poor, and seemed wretchedly unfit, with 
 their tattered clothes, to support twelve or fif- 
 teen hours of waiting in the bitter air. It was 
 so dark (there was no gas, for the reason that 
 there was no coal to make it with) that we could 
 
 F 
 
82 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 not see clearly ; but our eyes had grown some- 
 what accustomed to the gloom, and we were 
 able, on looking closely, to perceive approxi- 
 mately the features of the people, and some- 
 times the expressions of their faces. As we 
 peered into the thicknesses of the crowd and 
 sought for revelations of the nature of its 
 elements, a lady with us Madame de V. 
 happened to notice a woman leaning wearily 
 against a lamp-post. She spoke to her, and 
 was told one of the usual stories of children 
 starving, a drunken husband, no fire, and no 
 food ; and as she looked nearer still, she became 
 aware that the woman was far advanced in 
 pregnancy, seemed miserably weak, and was 
 assuredly in no condition to pass a night on 
 the icy stones. So, after exchanging a few 
 words with Colonel Wortley, Madame de V. 
 said to the woman in a low voice, in order that 
 the others might not hear, " I know the English 
 people who are distributing the food, and as 
 you are so unfit to await your turn, I have 
 obtained permission from them to go into the 
 depot and to bring you out some provisions. 
 Wait at this lamp -post till I come back." 
 Then, after taking a few steps towards the 
 depot, it occurred to Madame de V. that she 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. 83 
 
 had nothing in which to carry loaves and meat ; 
 so she went back to the woman ancj whispered 
 to her, " Give me your apron to bring it in." 
 At this proposal the woman shrank back sus- 
 piciously, thinking evidently that it was a mere 
 trick to steal her apron ; whereon Madame de 
 V. went on, with ready thought, " And as I 
 shall need both my hands to hold the corners 
 of the apron, I will ask you to be so kind as to 
 keep my muff for me while I am gone." This 
 pacified the woman, for she had sense enough to 
 recognise that a sable muff was worth more than 
 a blue apron ; so she untied the strings, mutter- 
 ing, " Well, I hope it's all right ; but don't be 
 long." Ten minutes afterwards Madame de V. 
 was back again with as heavy u weight as her 
 arms could carry, and then a new difficulty arose. 
 The woman in her eagerness almost flung the 
 muff at its owner, seized the bundle feverishly, 
 did not stop to thank, and hurried off; but the 
 neighbours in the crowd, observing what had 
 happened, claimed noisily, almost brutally, the 
 same privilege, declaring that it was a shame 
 to do for one what was not done for all, and 
 asserting that the woman had no rights superior 
 to theirs. As they began to grow threatening, 
 and as there were no police, two or three of 
 
84 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 us stood in between them and Madame de V., 
 while others got her away, pursued by abuse, 
 into the shelter of the depot. The incident 
 was not pleasant, but it gave us the measure 
 of some of the characters we had to deal with, 
 and it supplied new evidence in support of the 
 theory (which is so widely held) that it is folly 
 to be kind. 
 
 Inside the depot the sight was curious. It 
 was our first experience, and we all looked on 
 intently. The people came in, singly, through 
 one door, and passed out at another; and, as 
 each man or woman advanced suddenly into 
 the light, the astonishing variety of their ex- 
 pressions struck us all. Many looked so 
 brokenly fagged that their faces had lost all 
 other meaning; others, on the contrary, had 
 become uncontrollably excited ; some were 
 savage with ill - temper, and some trembling 
 with joy; some were sullen, and some were 
 eager; the eyes of some stared at us scowl - 
 ingly and defiantly; the eyes of others bright- 
 ened gluttonously as they caught sight of the 
 piles of biscuits, cheeses, and hams, and the 
 packets of coffee and sugar ; some (a very small 
 minority) thanked enthusiastically, with tears 
 in their eyes ; others grasped almost fiercely 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. 85 
 
 the objects handed to them, and rushed out 
 into the darkness to begin munching: On the 
 whole, it was a distressing sight, and I imagine 
 that we all went to bed that night with an 
 uncomfortable sensation in our throats. 
 
 On other occasions, in the daytime, I was 
 able to look with more scrutiny and more fruit 
 at the composition of the waiting crowd, and 
 my general impression was that it was more 
 miserable, more ill-conditioned, and, especially, 
 more evil-faced, than even the dirtiest crowds 
 usually are. A good many persons in it were 
 relatively decent ; honesty and goodness mixed 
 with anxiety and fatigue could be perceived 
 in the features of several of its members ; but 
 the general effect produced by it was one of 
 extreme wretchedness; and, worse than all, 
 it contained, here and there, some of those 
 strangely awful faces the faces of habitual 
 criminals which, when perceived suddenly, 
 almost choke those who catch sight of them. 
 In some Paris prisons, and in all Paris street- 
 fightings, I had beheld, with bewilderment and 
 horror, an infamy of expression in many coun- 
 tenances which exceeded all that imagination 
 usually conceives. In the ordinary conditions 
 of life such faces are never to be found in Paris ; 
 
86 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 it is only in jails and during revolutions that 
 they can be seen in any numbers ; and it was 
 behind bars or barricades that I had perceived 
 them so far. Yet there they were in the street, 
 physiognomies so appallingly depraved, so be- 
 fouled with degradations and defilements, so 
 denaturalised by hideous appetites, that gorillas 
 would have seemed angels of purity beside 
 them, physiognomies that, without actually 
 staring at them, no one could have supposed 
 possible in man. They could not be described 
 as animal, for no animal is capable of expressing 
 such pollution or of exhibiting such vice ; they 
 had a meaning which humanity alone, dragged 
 down to its deepest corruption, can convey. 
 Well, in the crowds awaiting food those faces 
 were rather frequently represented : I saw them 
 there in the open air for the first time except 
 during a revolution. Of course, they were not 
 really abundant ; but the excessiveness of their 
 horror, so infinitely more out of place in the 
 brightness of sunlight than in the darkness of 
 prison or amidst the violence of a riot, seemed 
 to multiply them, until, in a waking nightmare, 
 I saw them everywhere. There they were, in 
 liberty and peace, conditions which, till then, 
 I had never associated with them ; and they 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. 87 
 
 showed no shame. Their right to the " Eng- 
 lish gifts" was as real as that of all t&e others; 
 and yet the others, even the most wretched of 
 them, shrank instinctively away from them, and 
 left around them a ring of empty space. But 
 the creatures with those faces did not perceive 
 their solitude, they did not even seek to collect 
 together and support each other : each one of 
 them stood apart, alone; from each of them 
 seemed to exude a separate and distinct atmos- 
 phere of abomination. As I watched them, a 
 friend whispered to me, " Where do those gentle- 
 men live when they are at home ? I should like 
 to know, so as not to call on them." 
 
 The spectacle of the weary column was so 
 saddening that it did not need the additional 
 impress of the presence of those monsters. Yet 
 there they were, and there was no disputing 
 their title to be there. The food was for any- 
 body who chose to ask for it : they asked. It 
 will be a comparative relief to my memory to 
 begin talking again about the depots. 
 
 Yet the scenes in them were neither varied 
 nor agreeable ; they were, indeed, both mono- 
 tonous and disagreeable, and, after the first 
 effect upon us had worn off, we looked on at 
 tkem with weariness of spirit. It did not 
 
88 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 suffice to keep up our attention to tell ourselves 
 that the men were French electors, and there- 
 fore politically our equals ; that the women 
 were wives and mothers (or, at all events, 
 daughters), and our fellow-beings ; and that 
 all of them deserved our sympathy because 
 they were hungry: we did not, when a day 
 or two had passed, find those considerations 
 effective. We discovered we were there to 
 discharge a duty, not to satisfy a curiosity, 
 and the duty became ugly. Never did I per- 
 ceive so clearly the value of curiosity as a 
 stimulant and encouragement. As it faded 
 away, that mob, which, at the beginning, had 
 seemed to me so full of the promise of inter- 
 esting discoveries, assumed more and more its 
 proper aspect of dirty misery and uninstructive 
 repulsiveness : it told me nothing, and it smelt 
 very nasty. And I could not disguise from 
 myself that it lowered my idea of humanity, 
 and that it became unpleasant to me to re- 
 cognise that, after all, I was identical with 
 those repellent persons, and was differentiated 
 from them solely by the accident that I had 
 received an education and they had not. For- 
 tunately I had not much time to indulge my 
 disagreeable sensations ; but I mention them 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. 89 
 
 because they formed part of the day's work, 
 and because they showed that som. training 
 is needed (in many cases, at all events) to fit 
 us to endure contact with filth and unwhole- 
 someness. Those processions through the de- 
 pots were distinctly trying, and, with individual 
 exceptions, distinctly tiresome. Now that I 
 have sufficiently described their main features, 
 I can turn away from them, and can begin to 
 talk of the more attractive subject of individual 
 exceptions. 
 
 One of the most important of these depots 
 was installed in the then unfinished shop of 
 the Bon Marche, which had been built just 
 before the war broke out. The proprietor of 
 the establishment M. Aristide Boucicaut, who 
 was an excellent man, as well as a prodigious 
 linen-draper had offered the use of his great 
 ground - floor, with a special entrance at the 
 angle opposite the end of the Rue de Sevres, 
 where there was a large open place. As the 
 neighbourhood was poor and populous, a con- 
 siderable supply of food was accumulated there, 
 in anticipation of a large crowd, and public 
 notice was given of the moment at which the 
 distribution would commence. More than 
 twenty - four hours before the hour named 
 
90 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 people began to collect at the corner, and 
 when the morning came the entire space was 
 filled with a restless crowd, the greater part 
 of which had passed the night there. There 
 must have been ten thousand persons assembled, 
 two-thirds of whom were women. About eleven 
 o'clock the members of the Committee reached 
 the Bon Marche, and were joined by several 
 friends. The first news given to us was that 
 the impatience of the mob was growing danger- 
 ous, and, especially, that the pressure at the 
 corner was so violent that, if it could not be 
 relieved, there would inevitably be accidents. 
 Unfortunately, the preparations for distribution 
 were not complete : another hour was needed 
 before a sufficient number of portions could be 
 got ready, and the question was how to hold 
 the people steady in the interval. Some of 
 us went to the window on the first floor and 
 looked out. It was an ugly and a painful 
 sight. The instant we appeared, thousands of 
 white faces, some furious, some beseeching, 
 turned up to us, and cries arose that we were 
 deceiving them, that the hour was past, and 
 that they ought to be let in. Screams of 
 terrified, half- stifled women rang through the 
 air, as the mob swayed and surged. There 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. QI 
 
 were half a dozen of us at that window, star- 
 ing at the sight, but the only two ^that I re- 
 member were Laurence Oliphant and Mr Lan- 
 dells, the artist of the * Illustrated London 
 News ' : there were two or three of the Em- 
 bassy as well, but I forget which of them. We 
 shouted to the people, entreating them to 
 stand still, and promising that the door should 
 be opened the instant we were ready ; but 
 they could not hear for the noise they were 
 making, and we grew more and more certain 
 that some of them would be crushed if we could 
 find no means of making them stand back. 
 While we were hesitating what to do, we saw 
 that a woman had fallen beneath the window 
 and was being trampled on. Thereon we all 
 ran anxiously down-stairs; M. Boucicaut man- 
 aged to force open the upper half of the iron 
 shutter of the ground-floor corner window, and 
 he and I scrambled on to the top of some 
 empty cases, so as to be able to look out above 
 the mob and try to save the woman. Directly 
 we put our heads out, some eight feet from 
 the ground, we beheld just under us, between 
 the people, portions of what looked like a 
 bundle of rags mixed with arms and legs, the 
 others stamping on it from sheer impossibility 
 
Q2 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 of resisting the thrust from behind. It was 
 sickening to see the poor creature killed under 
 our eyes in that way, and we roared out sup- 
 plications to the mob to spare her and to hold 
 back, if only for an instant, while she was 
 lifted out. In some strange way, by a fierce 
 effort of the front ranks, there came two seconds 
 of recoil ; three other women got space enough 
 to stoop and to pick up the lamentable bundle, 
 and, stretching out our arms till we nearly fell 
 out of the window ourselves, we managed to 
 get hold of it and to bring it up to our level, 
 the nearer portions of the crowd cheering as 
 we got it in. A moment later we were on the 
 floor with our burden, and laid it on a counter. 
 It was a youngish woman, white, insensible, 
 bleeding from small cuts, covered with dirt, 
 her clothes in pieces. We bathed her face and 
 hands, and, after a while, got her round, so 
 far at least that she could begin to speak a 
 little. At first she was only dimly conscious, 
 and very breathless, and seemed bewildered 
 with terror ; but by degrees she became calm, 
 gained a little strength, and told us she had 
 passed thirty hours standing at that corner, 
 had felt the pressure gradually increasing, and, 
 suddenly, had known no more. We gave her 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. 93 
 
 cold beef- tea (the only liquid food we had), 
 with bread soaked in it, and, as sopn as she 
 was able to stand, got up a little subscription 
 for her amongst ourselves, filled a basket with 
 various food, and when, after an hour of rest, 
 she had grown comparatively strong, sent her 
 on her way by another door. 
 
 By the time she was gone everything was 
 at last ready, and the door was opened. The 
 first rush rather overpowered us : the pushing 
 was violent ; the weaker were thrown down ; 
 but, on the whole, the people behaved well, 
 and waited for their turn without too much 
 complaint. 
 
 And now I am going to tell the story of 
 the woman we dragged in, for the reason that 
 it supplies an example of a really bad case 
 brought about by the siege alone, and shows 
 exactly what was the nature and the course of 
 the siege distress, when that distress was real. 
 I felt, instinctively, a sort of personal respon- 
 sibility about that woman, and had a vague 
 impression that, as I had helped somewhat to 
 save her life, I ought not to stop there, but 
 was bound to go on and to try to discover 
 what her needs were, and whether anything 
 practical could be done for her. I had asked for 
 
94 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 her address, privately, when nobody was near, 
 and next morning, without telling any one of 
 my intention, I went to her. On my way I 
 was oppressed by a peculiar sensation of awk- 
 wardness, almost indeed of shame, such as is 
 experienced, I have been told, by most people 
 when they attempt for the first time to per- 
 form "good works." I certainly had never 
 done a "good work" in my life, and I well 
 remember how nervously I hoped that nobody 
 would suspect me, and that I should not be 
 found out. I can talk about it tranquilly now, 
 but at the time I felt like a culprit on the 
 point of being arrested. The woman lived in 
 the Rue St Jacques, on-, a fifth floor, in a poor 
 but decent house. When I got up to her door 
 my feeling of timidity and clumsiness increased. 
 I felt stupidly bashful, reproached myself for 
 coming at all, and was strongly tempted to go 
 away. I recollect that I found consolation 
 solely in the fact that no one met me on the 
 stairs. I stared for a moment at the bell (I can 
 see it still : it was a little brass chain, with a 
 chamois-foot hanging at the end), and, finally, 
 rang it with a somewhat convulsive effort. The 
 situation was so new to me that all the details 
 are impressed on my memory. No one came, 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. 95 
 
 but I heard a faint cry of " Entrez," and I 
 opened the door. In a large but almost empty 
 room my acquaintance of the day before was 
 lying, on a bed. She blushed violently, rose 
 hastily, and began to excuse herself, saying that 
 she had supposed it was the concierge. She was 
 evidently extremely uncomfortable, but I cannot 
 believe that she was half so uneasy as I was. 
 I had prepared a speech, but it faded out of 
 my head, and all I could do was to beg her to 
 forgive me for coming, and to pretend that 
 I wanted to know how she was ; and then, 
 abruptly rather roughly, I fear I asked her 
 to tell me the details of her life during the siege. 
 She seemed surprised at my request, and un- 
 willing to comply with it ; but by degrees, in a 
 disorderly fashion, she did confess what I wanted 
 to know. Here is the substance of the story 
 I got out of her. 
 
 She had been an artificial - flower - maker, 
 with abundant occupation. She had indeed 
 developed such a particular capacity for the 
 manufacture of tea-roses, that she had obtained 
 for the two preceding years almost the exclusive 
 supply of three of the large shops, employed two 
 girls to help her, and earned the high average 
 profit of ten francs a-day. Being a thrifty 
 
96 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 woman, she laid by money, and had bought 
 four debentures of the Northern Railway, which 
 brought her in an income of more than two 
 guineas a-year "a beginning of a fortune," as 
 she observed, with a faint smile. When the war 
 broke out she did not realise its meaning; she 
 supposed it would be over in a few weeks, and, 
 as she had two hundred francs in a corner of a 
 drawer, felt quite safe about money, even if her 
 work remained stopped for a while. But prices 
 went up so fast and so high that the two hun- 
 dred francs were gone in a month. Then she be- 
 gan to sell the railway debentures at a great loss, 
 and this product disappeared also very quickly. 
 So by the end of the second month she had to 
 turn her clothes and furniture into such cash as 
 they would fetch, and at last, in December, she 
 found herself entirely destitute, with scarcely 
 anything left except her bed and the gown and 
 shawl she wore. Happily, as the payment of 
 rent had been suspended by the Government 
 at the commencement of the siege, the landlord 
 could not turn her out for default, and she was 
 able for the moment to remain in her room. 
 Then came the worst part of all the waiting, 
 for hours a day in bitter cold, at the baker's 
 door for her pittance of black tallowy bread that 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. 97 
 
 made her ill. A cough began ; she grew weak ; 
 and when at last the investment was over, she 
 was exhausted in body, in mind, and in purse, 
 and was, furthermore, haunted by the terror 
 that in a short time the protection about rent 
 would come to an end, that her arrears would 
 be due, and that she would be turned into the 
 street. Then she heard that food (not the nasti- 
 ness of the siege, but real white bread!) was 
 going to be given away for nothing at the Bon 
 Marche, and she was one of the first to take a 
 place at that corner door. 
 
 She told me all this very disjointedly, with a 
 great deal of hesitation and of evident dislike 
 to talk about herself to a stranger, but with an 
 air of truth that convinced me. I learnt from 
 her also that she was known to one of the cur- 
 ates of the parish of St Jacques du Haut Pas, 
 so, on leaving her, I went straight to him and 
 asked him what he could tell me about her. 
 He happened to be a very noble specimen of a 
 priest, full of practical common -sense, and of 
 infinite experience of the forms of pain. He 
 informed me that he had been acquainted with 
 the woman for some years, and that her story 
 was perfectly exact so far as it went, but that 
 there was a good deal more behind. First, that 
 
 G 
 
98 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 she had a drag upon her in the shape of a 
 paralysed old aunt, who was finishing her days 
 somewhere in Auvergne, and to whom she had 
 paid a pension of a franc a-day. Secondly, that, 
 although she managed to lay by money, she 
 had always some to give to those who were 
 poorer than herself, and that, during the siege, 
 she had shared her savings and the product of 
 her sales with any one who needed help. Third- 
 ly, that her health had become so weakened, 
 and the moral impression on her of the events 
 that had passed around her had been so dam- 
 aging, that he feared she would have great 
 difficulty in recovering strength, and that he 
 was trying to get money from charitable persons 
 in order to send her (and others) to the seaside, 
 for change and rest. 
 
 He gave me also a good deal of detail about 
 the sufferings of which he had been a spectator 
 during the siege, and added strength to the im- 
 pression I had already begun to form, that there 
 had been no general starvation. He told me, of 
 course, of many people who were, more or less, 
 in want, and asked me to take a list of women 
 to whom food could be supplied privately, with 
 the certainty that it was both needed and de- 
 served ; and then, when I begged to be allowed 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. 99 
 
 to contribute my mite to the necessities around 
 him, refused to accept anything from me, saying 
 
 PT 
 
 that the English had done quite enough in 
 organising the food gifts. 
 
 By the time our conversation came to an end, 
 I had pretty nearly got over my sheepishness, 
 and was beginning, with the sudden ardour of a 
 neophyte, to be immensely interested in "good 
 works," which, like many others, I had regarded 
 until then from the top of my indifference. So, 
 in my new enthusiasm, I went back to the Hotel 
 Chatham, told Oliphant in secrecy the story of 
 my morning's work, and consulted him as to 
 what we should do about the woman. We 
 devised a beautifully constructed little plan, 
 quite within our small powers of realisation, and 
 of the invention of which we felt very proud ; 
 but, alas ! we were unable to carry it into exe- 
 cution. The poor creature became too ill to 
 leave Paris ; she dragged on through the Com- 
 mune, and died of exhaustion in July. At all 
 events her latter days were calm, and not 
 poisoned by money worries. We two, with a 
 group of her own friends and that good priest, 
 saw the last of her in the Montparnasse Ceme- 
 tery. Often did Oliphant and I talk together 
 of her afterwards, for we remembered her as a 
 
IOO SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 patient, brave, good woman. Yet neither of us 
 ever told her story : somehow we both shrank 
 from speaking of it to others. Now, however, 
 that a quarter of a century has passed, I think 
 I may venture, with deep respect for the mem- 
 ory of the poor flower-maker, to put the tale in 
 here, because, as I have already said, it supplies 
 a reliable illustration of the worst consequences 
 of the siege. 
 
 The experience of a few days, and the rapid 
 multiplication of the demands for private assist- 
 ance, irrespective of the public distributions at 
 the depots, decided Colonel Wortley and the 
 committee to open a special store for the issue 
 of provisions by ticket, so as to free the better 
 class of poor from the strain and shame of wait- 
 ing in the streets. A convenient place was 
 obtained for the purpose in a quiet corner near 
 the Boulevard Malesherbes, and I suspect that 
 much more real good was done there, and more 
 true suffering soothed, than by all the indis- 
 criminate public givings. It was, of course, 
 extremely difficult to obtain information about 
 the people who went there, for in most cases 
 the tickets were placed by other persons, and 
 we had no more means of following out the 
 work we were doing than in the ordinary uni 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. IOI 
 
 versal distributions ; but I was able occasionally 
 to lift up a corner of the veil, and to get a 
 glimpse of what was passing underneath. 
 
 Most of the cases of this category about 
 which I managed to collect information were 
 of the ordinary kind, and are not worth describ- 
 ing : clerks and employes of all sorts, and high- 
 class workmen and workwomen, had found 
 their pay stopped, had exhausted their slender 
 resources, and had struggled with the usual 
 difficulties. In a few instances, however, the 
 circumstances were special and grave, only I 
 was rarely able to learn the whole truth, so as 
 to have an entire story before me, and can 
 therefore say nothing interesting about the 
 majority of them. So far as I can recollect, 
 there were but two of which, by accident, I 
 heard full details, and which were sufficiently 
 outside the ordinary types of distress for it to be 
 worth while to tell them here. 
 
 The first concerned a retired artillery officer, 
 with a wife, a son, and a daughter, who lived 
 together in a little apartment near the Place de 
 1'Europe. Until the war came they got on 
 fairly well : they were very poor, but they man- 
 aged to subsist without running into debt ; the 
 father gave lessons in mathematics, the son was 
 
102 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 clerk in a bank, the daughter taught the piano. 
 The siege stopped their various incomes : the 
 father's little pension continued, perhaps, to 
 be paid to him, but of that I am not certain ; 
 all the rest disappeared. The father, old and 
 feeble as he was, offered his services on the 
 ramparts ; but on the second day, in getting a 
 gun into an embrasure, his leg was broken in 
 two places, and he was carried to a hospital, 
 where he remained until the capitulation. The 
 son became a National Guard, and rarely 
 showed himself to his mother and sister, who, 
 from the very beginning of the investment, found 
 themselves alone. In their case, as in so many 
 others, it was on the women that the burden 
 fell. The daughter got into an ambulance as 
 nurse ; but she was a weakly creature, of little 
 courage, with susceptible nerves, and when 
 some wounded men were brought in after the 
 first skirmish, she had a hysterical attack, and 
 was turned out by the doctors. The mother, 
 who also was a weak woman, became utterly 
 upset by her misfortunes, reproached the 
 daughter with her uselessness, and a quarrel 
 ensued, whereon the daughter ran out and 
 threw herself into the Seine. At this point of 
 the tale my information became incomplete, 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GI KTS AFTER THE SIEGE. IO3 
 
 and I did not learn how the girl was saved ; but 
 saved she was, and was taken in somewhere by 
 some one : so her mother, hearing no more of 
 her, and believing her to be dead, lost the little 
 reason she had, and was put into a lunatic 
 asylum. A few weeks later the daughter re- 
 appeared at her home, found it empty, and was 
 told her mother was insane. Thereon she too 
 grew demented, and, returning to the river, 
 drowned herself for good. Soon afterwards the 
 son disappeared, and it was never known what 
 became of him. So, when the father came out 
 of hospital, at the beginning of February, he 
 found his wife mad, his daughter dead, and his 
 son missing. The poor man's sorrow was terri- 
 ble, and as he had no means of subsistence, his 
 material distress also was extreme. Happily, 
 when he was absolutely without food, his case 
 became known to some one who was in com- 
 munication with the English committee; tickets 
 were obtained for him, and so long as the distri- 
 bution continued (that is to say, till about the 
 end of February, I .think), he received a daily 
 allowance. I heard the story from one of the 
 men employed at the private depot, and he in- 
 formed me some months later that the poor man 
 had been removed into the country by kind 
 
104 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 people, and that he was to live on his pension, 
 such as it was. But he was alone ; his home 
 and family were gone. Decidedly the siege 
 had been hard upon him. 
 
 In the second case a designer in a manufac- 
 tory o .J3ronze figures, a man who counted 
 rattier as an artist than an artisan, and who 
 earned easily from seventy to a hundred francs 
 a-week (but who had lived largely and had laid 
 by nothing), lost his eyes six months before the 
 war, by an accident in casting a statue, and 
 became incapable of earning his bread. His 
 wife was dead, but he had two sons and a 
 daughter, all good workers and doing well, and 
 they undertook to pay him, between them, an 
 allowance of three francs a-day until he could 
 be got into the Blind Asylum. When the siege 
 came on, the sons entered the National Guard, 
 and one of them was killed though seemingly 
 out of range by a lost bullet in the first skir- 
 mish. As the other son had no longer any in- 
 come other than his pay as a temporary soldier, 
 and as the daughter who, being tall and slight, 
 had been a lay - figure for the exhibition of 
 mantles and fashions in the rooms of one of 
 the great dressmakers had of course lost her 
 place by the closing of the establishment, the 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. 105 
 
 father and daughter were left, from September, 
 without means of subsistence. Fojr a time, 
 nevertheless, they managed to exist : their for- 
 mer employers gave them small sums ; other 
 people helped them somewhat ; and during the 
 first few weeks they scraped on. But by the 
 end of October these aids came to an end, and 
 they found themselves face to face with destitu- 
 tion. Furthermore, the daughter fell ill ; and 
 to make the situation still worse, the surviving 
 son, who until then had been a steady fellow, 
 took to drink, like so many others during the 
 siege-time, and instead of being a help, became 
 an additional source of affliction to the two poor 
 people. As none of them had any religion, they 
 had never made acquaintance with the clergy of 
 their parish, and could not apply to them for 
 assistance. At last they were reduced to the 
 humiliation of putting down their names at 
 the Bureau de Bienfaisance at the mairie of 
 their arrondissement and those who are ac- 
 quainted with the pride of most of the skilled 
 workmen of Paris, and with the horror they 
 have of public charity, will know that they must 
 indeed have been in deep distress to have re- 
 signed themselves to that step. Between hunger, 
 anxiety, and shame, the daughter (who had been 
 
IC)6 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 a very smart, almost elegant young woman, dis- 
 charging in perfection her function of wearing 
 clothes so skilfully as to tempt buyers with 
 them) fell into a condition of nervous prostra- 
 tion, which, at last, rendered her incapable of 
 walking. And there they were, the blind father 
 and the shattered daughter, alone in their two 
 rooms, from which, happily, as I have already 
 explained, they could not be turned out while 
 the siege lasted waiting for death to put an 
 end to their distress. About the same time, 
 the second son, weakened by intoxication, caught 
 typhoid fever and died. Suddenly, unexpected 
 aid appeared. A girl, who had been employed 
 by the same dressmaker as the daughter, had 
 been sheltered by a fairly rich old lady, to 
 whom her mother had been maid, and who, 
 having a generous heart, was looking about for 
 deserving people to assist. The girl bethought 
 herself of the " tryer-on," of whose deplorable 
 situation she was vaguely aware, and went to 
 look for her. She found her, and told her story 
 to the old lady, who went at once to see her, 
 and undertook to provide for her. A period 
 of relief followed : food, fire, and medicines were 
 supplied to them, and they began to look with 
 some hope to the future. But in December the 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. IOJ 
 
 old lady got a chill, and died in three days ; 
 whereon the situation of the father and daughter 
 became even worse than before, because of the 
 fierce cold, against which they could not battle. 
 The other girl (who continued to be cared for 
 by the relatives of the old lady) behaved well, 
 shared with the two the .little she had, went 
 to the baker for their bread allowance, and kept 
 them both just alive till* the capitulation. Then 
 came the public announcement of the " English 
 gifts," whereon some of my friends, knowing 
 that I was concerned in the distribution, came 
 or wrote to me recommending cases. At first 
 I tried to make some examination for myself, 
 but very soon I was beaten by the accumulation 
 of demands, and, after consulting Colonel Wort- 
 ley, told my friends they must assume the re- 
 sponsibility of their suggestions, and placed 
 tickets at their disposal. In this way I was 
 asked for help for the father and daughter by 
 a connection, as I discovered afterwards, of the 
 deceased old lady, to whom the other girl had 
 spoken about them. One morning I was in the 
 private-distribution depot looking on, when that 
 very girl came in. I spoke to her, asked 
 whether she was there for herself or for others, 
 and got from her in minute details (rather too 
 
IO8 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 minute indeed, for she was an hour over them) 
 the story I have just told. I did not visit the 
 poor people, for by that time I had too much 
 to do, and also was growing a little hardened ; 
 but I inquired often about them during two or 
 three years from the friend who had first spoken 
 of them to me, and was pleased to hear that 
 the father was alive, and that the daughter (who 
 was maintaining him) had returned to her place, 
 where she continued to be as elegant as before, 
 and displayed the apparel she was commissioned 
 to put on with a seductively languid new grace, 
 which she was supposed to owe to her sufferings 
 during the siege, and which the others envied. 
 I thought sometimes of going to look at her; 
 but my curiosity seemed to me somewhat indis- 
 creet, and, besides, I fancied that to behold 
 her all over satin and lace might damage the 
 keenness of my sympathy with her sad story. 
 The case was illustrative. The blindness of 
 the father had nothing to do with the war; 
 but the deaths of the two sons were due to 
 it, one directly, the other indirectly, and the 
 miseries of the daughter were caused by it 
 alone. A better example could scarcely be 
 found of mischief brought about by the siege; 
 yet here again the damage did not assume 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. IOQ 
 
 entirely the shape of starvation want of food 
 certainly played a part in it, but the deaths 
 of the brothers were not caused by famine, and 
 both the father and daughter lived on and got 
 well. 
 
 And there ends my personal knowledge of 
 remarkable sorrows resulting from the invest- 
 ment. I was in a position to look somewhat 
 behind the scenes ; I was exceptionally placed, 
 as a member of the English Committee, for 
 hearing of particularly bad examples ; I listened 
 to the talk and the experiences of a large num- 
 ber of persons, with many priests amongst them, 
 and yet I cannot call to mind any other very 
 distressing examples. I heard, of course, in 
 general terms, of many more; but I had no 
 means of testing them, and therefore, though 
 I in no way pretend that there were not hun- 
 dreds quite as sad as the few I have narrated, 
 I hold nevertheless to the conviction that the 
 siege did not produce anything approaching to 
 the starvation that was gratuitously attributed 
 to it. If evidence could not be found when it 
 was carefully sought for (and I did seek it 
 carefully), it does not seem unjust to infer that 
 it scarcely existed in any abundance. The effect 
 of the siege was, as I have said and shown, to 
 
IIO SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 kindle much disease and much moral and phys- 
 ical distress : its consequences, for years after- 
 wards, showed themselves in many cases of 
 enfeebled health and of damaged constitutions ; 
 but those consequences were generated, I be- 
 lieve, by cold, by anxiety, by gloomy surround- 
 ings, and by unwholesome nourishment, far 
 more than by positive absence of any food 
 whatever. If the siege had occurred in the 
 summer, instead of the winter, the larger part 
 of those consequences would not, in all proba- 
 bility, have come about at all. 
 
 I am therefore disposed to doubt whether the 
 " English gifts " did all the good that was in- 
 tended and expected by their promoters. That 
 they did some good is certain ; that they enabled 
 a good many people to make the first fair meal 
 they had eaten for a long while, is equally cer- 
 tain ; that, here and there, in a few cases, they 
 supplied food just at the last moment, when 
 it seemed to be unobtainable elsewhere, is, I 
 think, proved by the stories I have told; but 
 as there was no general absolute starvation, 
 their influence went no further. It was a 
 satisfaction to every one concerned to feel that 
 those results were attained; but the hope was 
 to do much more, and more was not done, 
 
ENGLISH FOOD GIFTS AFTER THE SIEGE. Ill 
 
 for the decisive reason that it was not there 
 to do. 
 
 Furthermore, though it pleased the English 
 to send the food, I doubt strongly that it pleased 
 the French to receive it. The circumstances 
 were delicate : the French were at that moment, 
 most naturally, in a condition of nerve-tension, 
 of rage, of humiliation, which led them to look 
 at everything with a fiercely embittered eye ; 
 and a good many of them imagined, in their 
 rankling susceptibility, that the object of Eng- 
 land was to humiliate them rather than to assist 
 them. And, honestly, considering what their 
 state of mind was at the time; considering 
 that they were writhing under defeat and pain ; 
 considering how unprepared they had been, 
 both by their national character and by the 
 previous conditions of their national life, to 
 stand up under the fearful blow that fell upon 
 them, I admit that they had much excuse for 
 their impression. The question was not whether 
 the impression itself was true or false, but whether 
 those who formed it were led to it by what ap- 
 peared to them, in their excitement, to be a 
 reasonable feeling. Their irritation was such 
 that, in many cases, it was almost unsafe for 
 a foreigner to speak to them. That irritation 
 
112 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 was, if not justifiable, at all events compre- 
 hensible, and it influenced every thought they 
 had. Even long afterwards I heard the " Eng- 
 lish gifts " referred to with resentment. The 
 Government of the period professed, officially, 
 to be very grateful, and to be much touched 
 by the sympathy exhibited by England ; and 
 of course the people who got the food were 
 glad to profit by it : but I am convinced that 
 the nation, as a whole, disliked our interference, 
 and would have preferred to see us " stop in 
 our island." 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE ENTRY OF THE GERMANS. 
 
 IN the early morning of ist March 1871, 
 Laurence Oliphant (who was then correspon- 
 dent of the * Times') and I left the Hotel 
 Chatham to walk up the Champs Elysees to 
 a balcony in the Avenue de la Grande Arme~e, 
 from which we were to view the entry of the 
 Germans into Paris. The sky was grey; the 
 air was full of mist ; not a soul was to be seen ; 
 the shutters of every house were closed ; a day 
 of national humiliation could not have com- 
 menced more dismally. I remember that we 
 felt an oppressive sensation of loneliness and 
 gloom, which we communicated to each other 
 at the same instant, and then laughed at the 
 simultaneity of our thoughts. 
 
 At the Arch of Triumph were two men in 
 blouses, the first we met. They were staring 
 
 H 
 
114 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 through the mist at the Porte Maillot, and we 
 proceeded to stare too, for it was from that 
 gate that the entry was to be made. So far as 
 we could see, the whole place was absolutely 
 empty ; but our eyes were not quite reliable, 
 for the fog on the low ground was so thick that 
 it was impossible to make out anything. That 
 fog might be full of troops, for all we knew. 
 
 It was then about half-past seven, and as we 
 had been told the night before that the advanced- 
 guard would come in at eight, we thought, after 
 standing for some minutes on the heaps of gravel 
 which had been thrown up during the siege to 
 form a trench and barricade under and around 
 the Arch, that we had better move on to our 
 balcony. Meanwhile, however, some twenty or 
 thirty other blouses, evil -faced and wretched, 
 had come up ; they eyed us with undisguised 
 suspicion, and consulted each other, apparently, 
 as to what we could be, and what they should do 
 to us. We left them hesitating, and walked on. 
 
 A group of Englishmen gathered on that bal- 
 cony a dozen curious sight-seers. The owner 
 of the house was Mr Corbett, who was afterwards 
 minister at Stockholm ; amongst the others, so 
 far as I remember, were Mr Elliot, the Duke of 
 Manchester, Captain Trotter, and Lord Ronald 
 
THE ENTRY OF THE GERMANS. 
 
 Gower. Excepting the men in blouses about 
 the Arch, who by this time had multiplied to 
 at least a hundred, there was nobody within 
 sight. The void was painful. Not a window 
 was open (excepting in the rooms to which we 
 had come) ; our balcony alone was peopled ; one 
 of the greatest historic spectacles of our time 
 was about to be enacted in front of us ; yet, save 
 ourselves and the blouses, there was no public to 
 contemplate it. The French who lived up there 
 refused to look, or, if they did look, it was from 
 behind their shutters. Such part of the educated 
 population as were in Paris that day (most of 
 them were absent) hid themselves in grief. We 
 English represented the rest of the world, as we 
 generally do on such occasions. 
 
 We gazed hard at the Porte Maillot, from 
 which we were distant about a quarter of a 
 mile; but though the mist had begun to lift a 
 little, it was still too thick to allow anything 
 to be distinguished clearly on the Neuilly road. 
 We looked and looked again in vain. It was 
 not till we had waited, somewhat impatiently, 
 for half an hour, that, at a quarter past eight, 
 some one exclaimed, " I do believe I see moving 
 specks out there beyond the gate." Up went all 
 our glasses, and there they were ! We recognised 
 
Il6 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 more and more distinctly six horsemen coming, 
 and evidently coming fast, for they grew bigger 
 and sharper as each second passed. One seemed 
 to be in front, the other five behind. 
 
 As we watched eagerly they reached the open 
 gate, dashed through it, and, the instant they 
 were inside, the five behind spread out right and 
 left across the broad avenue, as if to occupy it. 
 The one in front, who, so far as we could see, 
 had been riding until then at a canter, broke 
 into a hand-gallop, and then into a full gallop, 
 and came tearing up the hill. As he neared us 
 we saw he was a hussar officer a boy he did 
 not look eighteen ! He charged past us, his 
 sword uplifted, his head thrown back, his eyes 
 fixed straight before him, and one of us cried 
 out, "By Jove, if that fellow's mother could 
 see him she'd have something to be proud of 
 for the rest of her time ! " The youngster raced 
 on far ahead of his men, but at the Arch of 
 Triumph the blouses faced him. So, as he 
 would not ride them down in order to go 
 through (and if he had tried it he would only 
 have broken his own neck and his horse's too 
 in the trench), he waved his sword at them, and 
 at slackened speed passed round. We caught 
 sight of him on the other side through the 
 
THE ENTRY OF THE GERMANS. 117 
 
 archway, his sword high up, as if he were 
 saluting the vanquished city at his* feet. But 
 he did not stop for sentiment. He cantered 
 on, came back, and as his five men had got 
 up by that time (he had outpaced them by a 
 couple of minutes), he gave them orders, and off 
 they went, one to each diverging avenue, and 
 rode down it a short distance to see that all 
 was right. 
 
 The boy trotted slowly round and round the 
 Arch, the blouses glaring at him. 
 
 The entry was over that is to say, the Ger- 
 mans were inside Paris. That boy had done 
 it all alone. The moral effect was produced. 
 Nothing more of that sort could be seen from 
 the balcony. We took it for granted that the 
 rest, when it came, would only be a march past, 
 and that thenceforth the interest of the drama 
 would be in the street. So to the street Oli- 
 phant and I returned, two others accompany- 
 ing us. The remainder of the party, if I re- 
 member right, stopped where they were for 
 some time longer. 
 
 Just as we got to the Arch the boy came 
 round once more. I went to him and asked his 
 name. 
 
 " What for ? " he inquired. 
 
Il8 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 " To publish it in London to - morrow 
 morning." 
 
 " Oh ! that's it, is it ? " he remarked, with a 
 tinge of the contempt for newspapers which all 
 German officers display. "Well, I'm von Bern- 
 hardi, 1/j.th Hussars. Only, if you're going to 
 print it, please give my captain's name also; 
 he's von Colomb." 
 
 Five minutes later a squadron of the regiment 
 came up, and Lieutenant von Bernhardi's com- 
 mand-in-chief expired. But the youngster had 
 made a history for his name ; he was the first 
 German into Paris in 1871. 
 
 (I heard, the last time I was in Germany, 
 that the brave boy Bernhardi is dead, and that 
 Colomb was then colonel of the King's Hussars, 
 at Bonn.) 
 
 We stood amongst the blouses, and wondered 
 whether they would wring our necks. We were 
 clean, presumably we had money in our pockets, 
 and I had spoken to a German three unpar- 
 donable offences. No attack, however, was 
 made on any of us for the moment. Now that 
 I look back on the particular circumstances, I 
 fail to comprehend why they were good enough 
 to abstain. 
 
 More and more troops marched up, infantry 
 
THE ENTRY OF THE GERMANS. 1 19 
 
 and cavalry, but always in small numbers ; the 
 mass of the German army was at Lpngchamp, 
 for the great review to be held that morning by 
 the Emperor, and the 30,000 men who, under the 
 convention of occupation, were to enter Paris 
 (in reality, about 40,000 came), were not to ap- 
 pear till the review was over. 
 
 At nine o'clock the commander of the occu- 
 pation (General von Kameke) rode in with an 
 escort. At his side was Count Waldersee, who 
 during the war had been chief of the staff to 
 the Duke of Mecklenburg, to whose army Oli- 
 phant had been attached. Seeing Waldersee, 
 Oliphant jumped out to greet him, shook hands 
 with him warmly, chatted gaily, and, after show- 
 ing various signs of intimacy, came back towards 
 us laughing, as the other rode on. This was, not 
 unnaturally, too much for those of the blouses 
 who saw it, and, before Oliphant could reach 
 us, they rushed at him. Some hit him, some 
 tried to trip him up ; a good dozen of them were 
 on him. A couple of us made a plunge after 
 him, roared to the blouses that he was an 
 Englishman, and that they had no right to 
 touch him ; and somehow (I have never under- 
 stood how) we pulled him out undamaged, but a 
 good deal out of breath and with his jacket torn. 
 
120 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 The blouses howled at us, and bestowed un- 
 gentle epithets on us, and followed us, and men- 
 aced ; but we got away into another part of the 
 constantly thickening crowd, and promised each 
 other that we would speak no more that day to 
 Germans. I need scarcely say that the mob 
 was unchecked master, that the Germans would 
 not have interfered in any fight that did not 
 directly concern them, and that neither a French 
 policeman nor a French soldier was present to 
 keep order within the limits of the district fixed 
 for the occupation. Those limits were the 
 Place de la Concorde on the east, the Faubourg 
 St Honore and the Avenue des Ternes on the 
 north, the Seine on the south. 
 
 By ten the sun had worked through the fog, 
 and also, by ten, a considerable number of the 
 inhabitants of Paris had become unable to resist 
 the temptation of seeing a new sight, and had 
 come out to the show. At that hour there must 
 have been 30,000 or 40,000 people in the upper 
 part of the Champs Elysees ; the gloom of the 
 early morning was as if it had not been ; all was 
 movement and brightness. The crowd, which 
 in the afternoon we estimated at 100,000 to 
 150,000, was composed, for the greater part, of 
 blouses ; but mixed with them were a quantity 
 
THE ENTRY OF THE GERMANS. 121 
 
 of decent people, from all parts of the town, 
 women and children as well as men, belonging, 
 apparently, to the classes of small shopkeepers, 
 employees, and workmen. From morning to 
 night I did not perceive one single gentleman 
 (excepting a foreigner here and there) ; nor was 
 a shutter opened in the Champs Elysees. The 
 upper strata kept out of sight ; it was the other 
 couches, especially the very lowest, that had 
 come out. 
 
 Directly troops enough were in to supply 
 pickets, sentries were posted at the street- 
 corners; patrols were set going; a guard was 
 mounted at the house of Queen Christina, in the 
 Champs Elysees, which had been selected for 
 the German headquarters. We looked on at 
 all this, at first with close attention, but by 
 degrees the state of things grew rather dull. 
 In times of great excitement, events seem to be- 
 come stupid so soon as they cease, temporarily, 
 to be dangerous. Besides, for the moment, the 
 interest of the day had changed its place and 
 nature ; it was no longer in the German army, 
 but in the French crowd ; not in the entry, but 
 in the reception. As we had rightly judged, the 
 drama was in the street. So we stood about 
 and watched the people, and talked to some of 
 
122 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 them, and thought that, on the whole, they be- 
 haved very well. Of course they would have 
 done better still if they had stopped at home, 
 and had left the Germans severely alone ; but, 
 as they had thought fit to come, they also 
 thought fit to keep their tempers, which was 
 creditable to them. So long as they were not 
 provoked by some particular cause, they re- 
 mained quiet and showed no rage. They 
 wanted to behold a remarkable sight that was 
 offered for their inspection, and though beyond 
 doubt it vexed them, their vexation was not 
 strong enough to check their curiosity. At 
 least that was our impression from what we saw. 
 At half-past one I had wandered back alone 
 to the Avenue de la Grande Armee, where the 
 crowd had become very dense, filling up, indeed, 
 the entire roadway. On the other side I saw a 
 horseman trying to work his way through. It 
 was Mr W. H. Russell. I could not get to him 
 to speak, but I knew by his presence there 
 that the review (to which he had ridden from 
 Versailles) was over, and that, before very long, 
 the real march in would commence. It did not 
 occur to me at the moment that Mr Russell was 
 doing a risky thing in cutting across the mob on 
 a prosperous horse, which manifestly had not 
 
THE ENTRY OF THE GERMANS. 123 
 
 gone through the siege-time in Paris. It was 
 not till some hours later that I Jearnt how 
 nearly the mob had killed him. 
 
 At last, at two o'clock, thick dust arose out- 
 side the Porte Maillot, and I made out with 
 my glass that the people were being pressed 
 back at the gate, and that troops were advanc- 
 ing slowly for the mob would not make way, 
 and the Germans were patient and gentle with 
 them. The head of the column got up creep- 
 ingly as far as the Arch of Triumph ; but then 
 came a dead block. The gathering of people 
 filled up the Place de 1'Etoile and the upper 
 part of the Avenue des Champs Elysees, and 
 packed it all so solidly that often, for minutes 
 at a time, the cavalry could not move ahead. 
 A good half-hour passed before space was 
 cleared for the staff; and even then, for nearly 
 another half- hour after they had reached the 
 Neuilly side of the Arch, they had to sit still 
 upon their horses, unable to progress one yard. 
 
 And what a staff it was ! With the excep- 
 tion of the Crown Prince Frederick, every prince 
 in the army and that meant almost every prince 
 in Germany and heaps of officers of high rank, 
 had come up from the review to take part in 
 the ride in. At their head, alone, sat the late 
 
124 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg, taking precedence 
 as the senior reigning sovereign present. Be- 
 hind him were rows on rows of members of 
 the royal and historic families of Germany, 
 some twenty in a row, and, including aides- 
 de-camp and orderlies, some thirty rows ! In 
 every sort and colour of uniform, they stretched 
 across the full width of the great Avenue from 
 curbstone to curbstone, and would have filled 
 up the pathways too if they had not been already 
 choked with French spectators. I had the good 
 fortune to penetrate to the corner of the pave- 
 ment where the Place de 1'Etoile opens out, 
 and there I stood and gazed. 
 
 The sun shone splendidly; the mob stared 
 silently; the princes waited tranquilly. 
 
 I recognised many faces that I had got to 
 know at Versailles during the siege. I saw 
 Meiningens, and Leopold Hohenzollern, and 
 Altenburgs, and Lippes, and Reuss, and Pless, 
 and Schoenburgs, Waldecks, Wieds, Hohen- 
 lohes, and Mecklenburgs, and the bearers of 
 other names that are written large in the 
 chronicles of the Fatherland. 
 
 And as I went on looking, my eyes fell on to 
 the front rank, and the fourth man in that rank 
 was Bismarck, 
 
THE ENTRY OF THE GERMANS. 125 
 
 His right hand was twisted into his horse's 
 mane ; his helmeted head hung down* upon his 
 chest, so low that I could perceive nothing of 
 his face except the tip of his nose and the ends 
 of his moustache. There he sat, motionless, 
 evidently in deep thought. After I had watched 
 him for a couple of minutes (I need scarcely 
 say that, having discovered him, I ceased to 
 look at anybody else), he raised his head slowly 
 and fixed his eyes on the top of the Arch, which 
 was just in front of him, some eighty yards off. 
 In that position he remained, once more motion- 
 less, for a while. I did my best he was only 
 the thickness of three horses from me to make 
 out the expression of his face, which was then 
 fully exposed to me ; but there was no marked 
 expression on it. At that moment of intense 
 victory, when all was won, inside surrendered 
 Paris, with the whole world thinking of him, 
 he seemed indifferent, fatigued, almost sad. 
 
 Suddenly I saw that his horse's head was 
 moving from the line ; he was coming out. 
 He turned to the right, in my direction; he 
 raised his hand to the salute as he passed before 
 his neighbours to the end of the rank, came 
 straight towards me, and guided his horse in 
 between the column of officers and the tightly 
 
126 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 jammed crowd on the pavement. It seemed 
 impossible he could find room to pass, so little 
 space was there ; but pass he did. The top of 
 his jackboot brushed hard against my waistcoat ; 
 but with all my desire to get out of his way I 
 could not struggle backwards, because of the 
 denseness of the throng behind me. No French- 
 man recognised him. I have wondered since 
 what would have happened if I had told the 
 people who he was. Would they have gaped 
 at him in hating silence ? Would they have 
 cursed him aloud? Would they have flung 
 stones at him ? Or would they, as a safer 
 solution, have battered me for the crime of 
 knowing him by sight ? He rode on slowly 
 down the hill, making his way with difficulty. 
 I heard next day that, once outside the gate, 
 he trotted straight back to Versailles. 
 
 So, on that marvellous occasion an occasion 
 which he, of all men, had most contributed to 
 create he did not enter Paris after all (beyond 
 the Arch of Triumph, I mean). A friend to 
 whom I told this story some years later, took 
 an opportunity to ask him what was his reason 
 for riding away and for taking no further part 
 in the day's work. He answered, " Why, I saw 
 that all was going on well, and that there would 
 
THE ENTRY OF THE GERMANS. 127 
 
 be no row : I had a lot to do at Versailles, so I 
 went and did it." If that was in * reality his 
 sole motive, he proved that he possessed, at 
 that period of his life, a power of self-control 
 which he has lost since ; for it must have cost 
 him a good deal to forego the splendid satis- 
 faction of consummating his work by head- 
 ing the triumphal progress down the Champs 
 Elysees. 
 
 At the moment when this happened I was 
 separated from Oliphant ; but as we had fixed 
 upon a trysting-place close by, I was able to 
 find him soon, and to tell him of the sight I 
 had just witnessed. He was sorry he had not 
 seen it too, for he was curious about the mental 
 ways of Count Bismarck (as he was then). 
 
 At last the cavalry in front succeeded in open- 
 ing out a way. But what a way ! It was a 
 twisting narrow path, all zigzags, curves, and 
 bends ; not twenty yards of it were straight. 
 The French stood doggedly; they would not 
 move. With infinite patience, avoiding all bru- 
 tality, excepting here and there when some 
 soldier lost his temper for a moment and used 
 the flat of his sword, the Germans ended by 
 squeezing the mob just enough to form a crooked 
 lane a few yards wide, between two walls of 
 
128 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 people, and down that lane the first part of 
 the solemn entry (the only part I saw) was per- 
 formed. It was not an effective spectacle, nor 
 did the German army, otherwise than by their 
 mere presence there, represent a conquering host; 
 they were vastly too polite for victors, and 
 vastly too irregular for a phalanx. Regarded 
 either as a military pageant or as a blaze of 
 triumph, the entry was a failure. Decidedly 
 young Bernhardi had the best of it. There was 
 sore talking afterwards, amongst the troops that 
 had not come in, about the sacrifice of the glory 
 of Germany to fanciful ideas of respect for the 
 vanquished. 
 
 The march down the Champs Elysees com- 
 menced about three o'clock, but we did not care 
 to follow it ; it was difficult to see anything at 
 all, so wedged in was the column ; and, further- 
 more, we had eaten nothing for nine hours and 
 were desperately hungry. So, as some one told 
 us that a cafe was open at the corner of the 
 Avenue de 1'Alma, we went off to it, in hopes. 
 Most happily the report was true ; only the 
 place was so crammed with devouring Germans 
 that we could obtain scarcely anything. To 
 punish the owner for feeding the foe, the blouses 
 had the kindness to pull that cafe to pieces two 
 
THE ENTRY OF THE GERMANS. I2Q 
 
 days afterwards, at the moment of the evacua- 
 tion. 4 
 
 And then we strolled again, and stood about, 
 and listened to the talk of the mob, and noticed 
 more and more that, though full of a dull hate 
 against the enemy, the hate was in no way 
 violent. Curiosity, as I have already said, was 
 more vigorous than rage. Sometimes a blouse 
 would curse an officer, or sneer at one, or even 
 lift a threatening hand (though that was rare) ; 
 but, on the whole, they were very quiet, and 
 they all ran for their lives if, here and there, a 
 too aggressively provoked German made pretence 
 to ride at them or to raise his sword. I cannot 
 sufficiently repeat that, taking into account the 
 realities of the position, the crowd behaved well. 
 There was some laughing, and a good deal of 
 amused comment on the appearance of the 
 Germans ; some scoffed at them, especially at 
 the few who wore the Frederick the Great mitre 
 shakos of the Foot Guards; but some again 
 frankly praised the height and size, and particu- 
 larly the aristocratic bearing, of many of the 
 officers. A woman at my side gave vent 
 simultaneously to her artistic appreciation of 
 them, and to her indignation at being 
 forced involuntarily to admire them, by ex- 
 
 I 
 
I3O SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 claiming, " C'est degoutant comme ils sont 
 distingues ! " 
 
 It was only on the fringes of the crowd, so far 
 as I saw and heard, that attacks were made 
 and cruelties committed, and even there, only 
 against persons who spoke to Germans, or were 
 suspected of being "spies," whatever that might 
 mean. (At that time, the exclamation " Nous 
 sommes trahis " was considered to explain and 
 excuse everything.) A friend of mine saw a 
 young woman, smartly dressed, but pale and 
 seemingly half starved, trying to talk to some 
 officers at the corner of the Rue de Presbourg 
 in the Avenue Josephine (now the Avenue Mar- 
 ceau). And then, when she turned away from 
 them, he also saw, to his sickening disgust, a 
 band of blackguards rush at her. Within half a 
 minute all her clothes were torn from the un- 
 happy creature, and she was cruelly beaten; 
 and there she stood, shrieking, in the sunlight, 
 with nothing left untattered on her but her stays 
 and boots, her bare flesh bleeding everywhere 
 from cuts. And this was what those ruffians 
 called " patriotism " ! An hour later I was told 
 that another woman, for a similar offence, had 
 been thrown into the Seine ; but my informant 
 had not seen it with his own eyes, as in the other 
 
THE ENTRY OK THE GERMANS. 13! 
 
 case. Of course these atrocities were the work 
 of the filthiest scum of the population. 
 
 By five o'clock, when the troops off duty had 
 been dismissed, the door of every house in the 
 Champs Elysees, and in all the streets within the 
 area of occupation, bore chalk-marks indicating 
 the regiment and the number of men to be 
 billeted there ; and there began to be a clearance 
 in the roadway. So, as there was little to see 
 that we had not already seen, Oliphant and I 
 went to the Embassy, passing through the 
 Faubourg on our way, and observing that the 
 limits of the occupation were guarded on each 
 side by German and by French sentries, face 
 to face, and sometimes not a yard apart. We 
 thought that was not pleasant for the French. 
 At the Embassy we found, as well as I remember, 
 the present Sir E. Malet, the present Sir F. 
 Lascelles, Mr Barrington, and Mr Wodehouse. 
 They told us about Mr W. H. Russell, who, 
 after he had passed me in the Avenue de la 
 Grande Armee, had been set upon by the crowd, 
 who tried to drag him from his horse and lynch 
 him. They took him for an isolated German, 
 in plain clothes, and thought the opportunity 
 was excellent. Nevertheless, by pluck and luck, 
 he had managed to gallop on to the shelter of 
 
132 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 the Embassy, left his horse there, proceeded on 
 foot to the Northern Station, got to London at 
 midnight, by special boat and train, wrote sev- 
 eral columns for the morning's ' Times,' went to 
 bed, and next day returned to Paris. 
 
 We heard, at the same time, that Mr Archibald 
 Forbes had been knocked over for speaking to 
 a German, and rather hurt, but that he had been 
 rescued by some of the more decent French 
 members of the crowd, and taken, as prisoner, 
 to the nearest Mairie, where he had been re- 
 leased. 
 
 After resting for a while, we went back into 
 the Champs Elysees by the Embassy garden-gate 
 in the Avenue Gabriel, so as to avoid the pres- 
 sure in the Faubourg. We fancied that the 
 French had already grown somewhat accustomed 
 to the presence of the " Prussians," as they 
 called all the Germans indiscriminately. It was 
 evident they did not yet consider them to be nos 
 amis Us ennemis, as in 1814, but they had got so 
 far as to look at them with relative calm and 
 much inquisitiveness, and here and there two or 
 thrae words were exchanged, with looks that 
 were not unkind. The Germans generally were 
 studiously civil, and even respectful ; it was clear 
 that stringent orders had been given them to put 
 
THE ENTRY OF THE GERMANS. 133 
 
 on their best behaviour. As one example of 
 their conduct, I was told next day &y a priest 
 who lived in the Rue du Colysee that is to say, 
 within the occupied district that nearly all the 
 soldiers saluted him in the streets. 
 
 A Uhlan band was playing in the Place de la 
 Concorde ; the sun had set ; evening was coming 
 down ; we were tired ; so we went to dinner at 
 the Hotel, with the feeling that we had been 
 through a memorable day. 
 
 Next morning, 2d March, several of us were 
 out early, and wandered about for hours gazing 
 at the sight of Paris " occupied." But though 
 the spectacle was strange and (even to us 
 foreigners) unpleasant, I cannot say that we 
 perceived anything exciting. Furthermore, the 
 novelty had worn off. The Germans had 
 settled down, just as they had done in a 
 hundred other towns throughout the war ; 
 they were in no way provoking in their atti- 
 tude or conduct; and though the crowd of 
 French onlookers was large in the morning 
 and dense in the afternoon, no temper was 
 exhibited (so far as I saw) on either side. The 
 Parisian populace seemed to accept the situa- 
 tion as a scarcely credible accident, disagree- 
 able, though not, apparently, vividly afflictive. 
 
134 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 The presence of the enemy was humiliating 
 beyond doubt, but it offered a new sight to 
 look at, and at all times the people of Paris 
 like a sight, whatever be its nature. There 
 was, of course, a strain in the air, a struggle 
 between patriotism and curiosity, but it seemed 
 to us Englishmen that curiosity had decidedly 
 the best of it. 
 
 The day was fine; the Germans sat about 
 in the streets, cleaning their arms, smoking, or 
 staring at the mob. They did not look a bit 
 like conquerors (as the world imagines a con- 
 queror), and we all fancied that they were as 
 astonished to see themselves there as the French 
 were to behold them. At one moment we saw 
 several couples of hussars waltzing gravely to 
 their band on the central pavement of the Place 
 de la Concorde (I must say the French did not 
 like that at all they had never done it them- 
 selves) ; at another we watched artillery horses 
 nibbling the bark off the trees at the Rond 
 Point ; then, again, we looked on at some open- 
 air cooking by a Bavarian battalion in the Cours 
 la Reine : but it was all quite peaceful, it did 
 not seem like war, particularly in such sunlight. 
 It was only at the limits of the occupied district, 
 where German and French sentries faced each 
 
THE ENTRY OF THE GERMANS. 135 
 
 other, that there was anything acute to look at ; 
 to that sight we did not grow habituated, it was 
 painful from first to last. 
 
 During the entire day we heard of only one 
 dangerous incident. By the terms of the sur- 
 render the Germans had the right to enter the 
 picture - galleries of the Louvre, and to cross 
 the Tuileries Gardens for the purpose. But 
 the French public was ignorant of the stipu- 
 lation, and believed that the Place de la Con- 
 corde was the furthest limit allowed to the 
 conquerors ; so when it occurred to a certain 
 number of Bavarians, who were inside the 
 Louvre, to open the window of the Gallery 
 of Apollo and to look out on to the Quai, the 
 French who were passing there became natur- 
 ally furious at what they supposed to be a 
 scandalous abuse of force. A roar of rage went 
 up from the crowd which gathered instantly 
 below, to which the Bavarians replied by grin- 
 ning and making faces. In five minutes a 
 promising riot had worked itself up on the 
 Quai, and stones began to be thrown at the 
 window. Most luckily the headquarters of 
 General Vinoy, who commanded the French 
 garrison, were close by. He was told what was 
 happening, despatched one officer to quiet down 
 
136 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 the mob, and another to General Kameke to 
 beg him earnestly to withdraw all German 
 soldiers from the Louvre and the Tuileries 
 Gardens, declaring that the consequences might 
 be disastrous if he did not. Most wisely 
 I think I may say most kindly the German 
 general gave way, and the German soldiers 
 were ordered out. I saw nothing of all this, 
 for at the time I was a mile off; but I heard 
 about it an hour afterwards from a member of 
 General Vinoy's staff, who declared that the 
 German general had behaved very consider- 
 ately, and had in all probability prevented an 
 outbreak by abandoning his strict rights. 
 
 So the second day passed quite quietly. 
 
 In the evening I received the following note 
 from a friend in the French Ministry for Foreign 
 Affairs (I have preserved it as an historical 
 document) : 
 
 Les ratifications ont et echangees tantot a Ver- 
 sailles. Les Prussiens evacuent Paris demain matin. 
 Le Roi devait faire demain son entree solennelle a 
 Paris. II a ete desagreablement surpris de nous 
 trouver en regie des aujourd'hui. 
 
 This meant that, in consequence of the 
 rapidity with which the assembly at Bordeaux 
 had despatched their work of confirmation, the 
 
THE ENTRY OF THE GERMANS. 137 
 
 ratifications of the Treaty of Peace, which were 
 not expected for some days during vrhich time 
 the Germans were to remain in Paris had 
 reached Versailles that afternoon. The occu- 
 pation had therefore to come to an end at 
 once. 
 
 So, next morning, Oliphant and I started off 
 once more to the Arch of Triumph ; only, as 
 the Champs Elysees were crammed with troops, 
 we walked by the Boulevard Haussmann. On 
 reaching the Faubourg St Honore, at the bottom 
 of the Avenue Friedland, we were stopped by 
 the French cordon, and at the Rue de Tilsit 
 were stopped again by the German pickets ; but 
 we had a pass for each, and got through. I 
 believe I am correct in saying that we two were 
 the sole spectators on the Place de 1'Etoile, 
 which was rigorously guarded on every side ; at 
 all events, we saw no one else, and most cer- 
 tainly we stood alone under the Arch. 
 
 The barricade had been demolished by the 
 Germans, the trench had been filled up, the 
 ground had been levelled, and the entire force 
 strode through the great Arcade. If the march 
 in was a failure, the march out was indeed 
 a splendour. 
 
 As each regiment reached the circular en- 
 
138 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 closure, its colonel raised his sword and shouted 
 the command to cheer, and then his men tore 
 off their helmets, their busbies, or their czapkas, 
 tossed them on their bayonets, their swords, or 
 lances, and, heads flung back and eyes upturned 
 in maddening excitement, and faces frantic with 
 enthusiasm, they roared and yelled, and shrieked 
 out hurrah ! and gaped with wild laughter, as 
 they marched on, at the names of the old de- 
 feats of Prussia chiselled on the stone above 
 them defeats which they were then effacing. 
 
 Some 40,000 of them poured beneath the 
 Arch in utter intoxication of delight, exulting, 
 triumphing. It was difficult to believe that the 
 scene was real, so flaming was the paroxysm 
 of rejoicing. 
 
 Oliphant and I grew hot as we gazed at that 
 tremendous parade and hearkened to that pro- 
 digious paean, and told each other, almost in 
 a reverent whisoer. that at last we knew what 
 military glory meant. Never have I passed 
 since in view of the Arch of Triumph without 
 remembering vividly that soul-stirring spectacle. 
 
 When the last man was through and General 
 Kameke's staff had closed the column, the dra- 
 goon sentries at the heads of the Avenues backed 
 their horses in and formed a rear-guard, facing 
 
THE ENTRY OF THE GERMANS. 139 
 
 the howling mob which had followed the retir- 
 ing army up the Champs Elysees. /That mob 
 pressed on, and whooped, and execrated, and 
 defied. It was so easy to do all that at the tail 
 of the occupation ! 
 
 The German tread, the German march music, 
 the German shouts, faded gradually out of hear- 
 ing ; there was a vast cloud of dust in the sun- 
 light above the Neuilly road ; and all was over. 
 
 Then came ^a cruel contrast. A picket of 
 French soldiers, with lowered arms and faces 
 full of shame, passed slowly through the crowd 
 to reoccupy the Porte Maillot. The blouses 
 remained masters of Paris, and, a fortnight 
 later, made the Commune. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE COMMUNE. 
 
 DURING the Commune of 1871 I was living 
 at what was then the top of the Boulevard 
 Malesherbes, exactly opposite the Park Mon- 
 ceau. The view from my fourth floor was 
 open and far-reaching at that time it was 
 not masked by tall houses that have been 
 built since it ranged from the hills of St 
 Germain on the right, past Mont Valerien, 
 round to the heights of Bellevue, Meudon, and 
 Sceaux, and to miles of the roofs of Paris away 
 to the left ; in the middle, above the trees of 
 the park, the Arch of Triumph towered above 
 all. A better situation could scarcely have 
 been found for watching, safely and completely, 
 the various destructions that were going on. 
 And we had the view all to ourselves, for every 
 one who could run away had done so ; people 
 
THE COMMUNE. 14! 
 
 who, from duty, had stopped in Paris for the 
 first siege, went out of it for the second; the 
 flat I lodged in was the only one inhabited 
 throughout the Boulevard ; the shutters of 
 every other one were closed. 
 
 The bombardment from Mont Valerien and 
 Montretout which did far more harm than the 
 innocent German fire had effected, smashed a 
 quantity of houses in Auteuil, Passy, and the 
 Porte Maillot district, knocked off nearly all 
 the sculptures on the west side of the Arch 
 of Triumph, and even sometimes damaged roofs 
 and windows in the upper part of the Champs 
 Elysees did not reach into the Park Monceau. 
 We were just out of range, and, after the first 
 day or two, paid no more attention to the shells 
 that went on bursting a few hundred yards in 
 front of us than if they had been chestnuts 
 cracking before a fire. 
 
 It was a dull and dirty time; but we were 
 in satisfactory security. The Communards 
 took money from the Bank of France and 
 from such State institutions as had any, but 
 there was scarcely any pillaging of houses. 
 The Commune fought against the Government, 
 but, with the exception of priests, who were 
 objects of its special enmity, and of young men 
 
142 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 who refused to serve in its regiments, very few 
 private individuals were molested. 
 
 Food of all sorts was abundant, for as Paris 
 was besieged by the Versaillais on one - half 
 only of its circumference, and as the outside 
 of the other half was still held by the Germans, 
 who had no motive for stopping the entry of 
 provisions, supplies came in regularly through 
 their lines. 
 
 The place was so safe that in my strolls about 
 I was often accompanied by two little girls. I 
 used to walk for mere exercise as a rule, for 
 there was absolutely nothing of any interest to 
 be seen in the part of Paris where I found 
 myself. Indeed, during the entire duration of 
 the Commune, I beheld, until the end came, 
 but two remarkable sights. 
 
 One afternoon in the middle of May I was 
 sitting reading, with the windows open. Sud- 
 denly the whole house shook violently, and a 
 startling boom thundered through the air. I 
 rushed out on to the balcony, and there, before 
 me, clear- edged on the blue sky, stretched up- 
 wards from the house-tops a perpendicular cloud, 
 hundreds of feet high, exactly the shape of a 
 mighty balloon. From it broke out incessant 
 fulminating reports, which sounded like the 
 
THE COMMUNE. 143 
 
 crackling of musketry, but more deep-toned ; 
 like the resonance of hammer-blows on iron, 
 but more rapid ; like the roar of an express 
 train tearing through a station, but more last- 
 ing. And the sight was even grander than the 
 sound, for the cloud seemed made of countless 
 silvery ostrich feathers, rolling rapidly, con- 
 tinuously, almost regularly, round each other, 
 in and out, over and over, turning, twisting, 
 twining. The sun shone glowingly on the 
 whirling plumes ; for a minute they revolved 
 in endless vortices, and then, softly, caprici- 
 ously, began to change their hue; here they 
 whitened, there they blackened, elsewhere they 
 browned or yellowed ; gradually they grew dim, 
 both in colour and in form ; the convolutions 
 slackened ; the clanging peal died down ; 
 shapes dissolved ; tints disappeared ; move- 
 ment stopped; sound ceased. The grand bal- 
 loon lost life; it changed into almost ordinary 
 smoke, immense still, but inanimate ; slowly its 
 edges melted, slowly rents appeared in it, slowly 
 patches drifted off from it. Another minute 
 and, excepting a few floating shreds, it had passed 
 away. It had, indeed, been a spectacle to see. 
 
 What was it ? Of course it was an explosion 
 but of what ? 
 
144 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 I ran down-stairs, found the concierge trem- 
 bling, saw no one in the street, and started off 
 towards the Seine, in the direction where the 
 vanished cloud had stood. It was not till I 
 reached the Pont de 1'Alma that I learned the 
 nature of the accident. The cartridge factory 
 at Crenelle had blown up. The feathers were 
 formed by millions of cartridges bursting in 
 the air. 
 
 That was one of the two sights. The other 
 was the pulling down of the Vendome Column 
 on 1 5th May. 
 
 I saw the Column fall from the same window 
 near the bottom of the Rue de la Paix at which 
 Laurence. Oliphant had stood on i8th March 
 (the day of the outbreak of the Commune), when 
 a bullet coming through the glass, two inches 
 from his head, brought him a message, as he 
 told me an hour afterwards, that he was to 
 leave Paris at once and go back to Mr Harris 
 in America. The bullet was still in the wall. 
 
 At the foot of the Column the bronze sheathing 
 had been partially stripped off, and the stone- 
 work cut away to half its thickness, so as to 
 facilitate breaking. Ropes had been kid on 
 from the top to a windlass in the street. A 
 long bed of fagots, twenty feet thick, had been 
 
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 K-( nil ; .ui'l Id'- .ill' ni|. I in I li.il lii|- lii'l In 
 I.' ..h.ui'lnn. 'I. All. I ;i 'I' I., y ',( ,ui li'.ui , dill in;; 
 
 wliif h Hi- I'-n. /. , . ( nl -.till fmlli'-t ;iw;iy, m.hl 
 Ilic < nlnmn ;il licit |inml yy;i , j.:ii'-'l down !' 
 :ilini|l ;i |ii:u hi nl ll , '.uh ,l;iii' , \< >\\'/< i |n|><", 
 
 //< i ' ji < >< ni ' ' 1 , 1 1 1' 1 1 < n' I , vi' j . ' . ,' ' I into I IM- 
 
 1, imii'indH of eager hand* laid hold of 
 x 
 
146 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 them, and once again the pull commenced, this 
 time with direct traction. 
 
 I had got the statue into line with a chimney 
 in the Rue Castiglione, so as to be able to detect 
 the slightest oscillation ; but there was none at 
 all, the column, all wounded as it was, stood 
 immovable. Five minutes passed, five minutes 
 of excited hope to me, for, from the braveness 
 of the resistance, it almost seemed as if the 
 destroying brutes would not be able to succeed. 
 At last a shiver ran down my back ; I had become 
 conscious, after a particularly savage jerk on the 
 ropes, that the line between the chimney and the 
 statue was no longer exactly straight. Slowly 
 very slowly the statue swerved past the chim- 
 ney ; slowly the great column bowed towards me 
 never did any one receive so superb a saluta- 
 tion; slowly it descended, so slowly that it almost 
 seemed to hesitate : in a great haze of spurting 
 dust it fell. There was scarcely any noise, and 
 no tremor of the air or ground ; but the twenty 
 feet of fagots were flattened down to nothing, 
 and the dust rose thick like fog. 
 
 With a wild rush and frantic shouts, the 
 people dashed past the sentries into the Place 
 Vendome, leaped upon the dislocated fragments, 
 and howled coarse insults at them. 
 
THE COMMUNE. 147 
 
 Mournfully I went away, murmuring to my- 
 self, "Poor France!" 
 
 All the same, that, too, was a sight to see. 
 
 A few days afterwards, on Monday, 22d May, 
 about seven in the morning, a servant rushed 
 into my bedroom, and woke me with a shout 
 of " Monsieur, Monsieur, the tricolour is on the 
 Arch of Triumph ! " I jumped to the window, 
 and there it was. Its presence there, in the 
 place of the red flag of the day before, could 
 mean nothing else than that the Versailles troops 
 had at last got inside Paris, and had advanced 
 already as far as the Arch. In that case they 
 might at any moment reach the Boulevard Males- 
 herbes ! That was indeed interesting. 
 
 I flung my clothes on and went on to the bal- 
 cony. A dozen Communards in uniform were 
 at that instant hurrying downwards past the 
 house, looking nervously behind them as they 
 went. I glanced all round, but nothing else 
 was visible. It was not till several minutes 
 had passed that I caught sight of something 
 red moving between the shrubs of the Park 
 Monceau. It was the trouser of a real French 
 soldier : the troops were there. An officer, fol- 
 lowed by a few men, came cautiously out from 
 the trees, advanced to the entrance of the Park, 
 
148 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 and looked down the Boulevard. The instant 
 he was seen from below a dozen shots were fired 
 at him ; the bullets whistled past us, high up. 
 I hastened down ; but before I got to the door 
 three or four of the red trousers had run into 
 the roadway, had thrown themselves on their 
 faces, and had begun shooting down the hill in 
 answer to the Communards. By this time firing 
 had become general throughout the neighbour- 
 hood ; but its desultory weakness showed that 
 no serious resistance was being offered imme- 
 diately round us. By eight o'clock all the posts 
 of the Commune within a quarter of a mile of 
 us had been turned by other troops and evacu- 
 ated by their defenders, so that, excepting a 
 chance bullet travelling here or there over the 
 house-tops, we got out of immediate fire, and 
 were able to stand almost safely in the street. 
 As our house was the only one inhabited, the 
 wounded were brought in there, and an ambu- 
 lance established in the courtyard, the men being 
 laid on carpets pulled off the staircase. A surgeon 
 asked me to put up a Geneva flag at the door, to 
 make it known that doctoring was going on there; 
 so I ran up again and asked for something to 
 make a red cross. The little girls tore up the 
 scarlet skirt of a big doll and pinned bands of 
 
THE COMMUNE. 149 
 
 it on a napkin, which we nailed to a broom 
 handle. That flag hung out until, late in the 
 day, the ambulance was moved nearer the ad- 
 vanced posts. 
 
 In another hour the number of prisoners 
 massed on the pavement under guard had 
 grown so considerable that it became neces- 
 sary to provide a temporary lock-up for them, 
 until cavalry arrived to supply an escort to 
 Versailles ; the cellars of an unfinished house 
 close by were utilised for the purpose. I 
 spent the entire day in the courtyard of that 
 house, looking on at the coming in of the 
 constantly increasing crowd of prisoners a 
 most curious and impressive exhibition, far 
 more interesting than the fighting. Some 
 cringed, some swaggered, some defied, some 
 cast themselves upon their knees and cried. 
 About one -tenth of them were women, who, 
 generally, were more violent than the men. A 
 few of them were wounded. On their arrival 
 in the courtyard their shirts were torn open 
 and their pockets turned out ; the names they 
 chose to give were taken down (the list was 
 made so carelessly that future identification 
 was scarcely possible), and then, with much 
 brutality, they were thrust down into the 
 
I5O SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 cellars. I remember many details, strange, 
 sad, ridiculous, or odious, that would be worth 
 telling; but I limit myself to a single case, 
 and I choose that one, not because it was more 
 remarkable than a dozen others which came 
 under my notice that day, but because I hap- 
 pened to be able to follow it out to what ap- 
 peared to be its end, and can therefore narrate 
 it completely. 
 
 About ten o'clock a young linesman staggered 
 into the courtyard, bareheaded, ghastly pale, 
 his tunic half stripped off. His neck was cut 
 deeply open at the bottom of the right side for 
 a length of nearly six inches, and the severed 
 flesh hung down on to the shoulder in a thick 
 scarlet fold ; he dripped with blood, and, liter- 
 ally, spattered it about him as he reeled in. 
 He still held his rifle with his left hand, and 
 with the right he dragged after him a young 
 woman with nothing on her but a torn chemise 
 and uniform trousers (which indicated that sht 
 had been a cantiniere of the Commune). With 
 a last effort, the soldier flung the woman to- 
 wards us, stammering out hoarsely, " She has 
 killed my captain ; she has killed two of my 
 comrades; she has cut my throat; and yet I 
 bring her to you alive ! " And then the poor 
 
THE COMMUNE. 
 
 young fellow dropped heavily, his rifle ringing 
 on the stones as it fell with him. 
 
 "Tie that woman's hands behind her," 
 ordered the commanding officer, as the soldier 
 was put upon a litter for conveyance to the 
 ambulance. Silent and breathless stood the 
 woman ; she seemed to expect immediate 
 death. Her shoulders, her tattered chemise, 
 her arms and hands, were splashed everywhere 
 with blood ; the expression of her white face, 
 with the hard glazed eyes, the clenched teeth, 
 and the strained distortion of the corners of 
 the mouth, was demoniacal. Straight she 
 stood up before us, her head thrown back as 
 if to dare the worst; she made no answer to 
 the questions put to her. There was discus- 
 sion amongst the officers as to whether it was 
 not their duty to have her shot at once. But, 
 though the case was clear, they shrank from 
 commencing executions by a woman, and, after 
 some hesitation, spared her, taking it for 
 granted that, when tried, she would be con- 
 demned. Her arms bound back, she was sent 
 into the cellar. She was, however, the only one 
 let off; from that moment every prisoner, man 
 or woman, brought in red-handed, was taken 
 across to the Park and executed straight away. 
 
152 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 At four in the afternoon the first column of 
 prisoners was formed up outside to march down 
 to Versailles. Under the pressure of many 
 other violent sights, I had forgotten the 
 murderess of the morning, and when, in the 
 ascending stream of captives, she emerged from 
 the dark staircase into the daylight, her appear- 
 ance was so frightful that, for some seconds, 
 I did not recognise her. She trickled with 
 sweat, for the heat below had been terrific; 
 the blood on her chemise and skin had dried 
 into black cakes that stuck to her; her hair, 
 dishevelled, hung in glued, glazed .spikes, over 
 her eyes ; she had evidently been sobbing, and, 
 as she could not move her hands, had been 
 unable to wipe her face, which was scored 
 with long dirty stripes formed by tears and 
 perspiration, and looking like fresh scars of 
 burns. We all stared at her with horror. 
 "Wash down that woman," cried one of the 
 officers. A stable -bucket full of water and a 
 horse - sponge were brought, and a corporal 
 sluiced her, with a bitter grin. She did not 
 flinch one inch as the water was dashed in 
 her face; exhausted as she must have been by 
 fatigue, emotion, want of food, and the sicken- 
 ing atmosphere in which she had just passed 
 
THE COMMUNE. 153 
 
 six hours, she stood like a cliff: she shut her 
 eyes and compressed her lips, that was all. 
 Dripping, half-naked, horrible, she tottered out 
 into the street and took her place in the 
 column, to walk twelve miles. The cavalry 
 escort formed up on the flanks. The colonel 
 roared out to the prisoners : " Look here ; if 
 any one of you dares to attempt to leave the 
 ranks he will instantly be shot down ! Hats 
 off. On to the ground your hats. Traitors 
 like you march bareheaded. Hats on the 
 ground, I tell you, or I'll fire into the heap 
 of you ! " 
 
 Five hundred hats and caps, of all sorts and 
 shapes and colours, fell into the dust (to be 
 picked up by the poor of the neighbourhood), 
 and the wretched procession started. 
 
 Two months afterwards I was going through 
 the prison of the women of the Commune at 
 Versailles with General Appert, who then com- 
 manded there. In one of the long rooms 
 thirty or forty women of all ages were sitting 
 reading or working. At a table near a window 
 was a young woman writing. She wore a neat 
 brown dress, and had very bright well-dressed 
 hair, and singularly delicate hands. A vague 
 memory started in me. Surely I had met her 
 
154 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 somewhere. She was the murderess of 22d 
 May ! I had seen those white ringers of 
 another colour; I had seen that hair less 
 glossy and less combed. I stared at her for 
 an instant, half -bewildered, half- horrified, and 
 then asked General Appert to find out who 
 she was. He called the matron and inquired. 
 The answer came, " Oh, General, she is the 
 best and quietest of them all, and really an 
 educated person. The lady visitors are quite 
 fond of her, she is so gentle and obedient. Of 
 course there may have been some reason for 
 sending her here ; and, besides, it is suspicious 
 that not a single friend has come to see her, 
 and that we cannot find out who she is. But 
 there is not the slightest evidence against her, 
 nor even any imputation ; so, as she is accused 
 of nothing, she will, I expect, be set at liberty." 
 As I listened, another voice came back to me. 
 I heard a broken cry of " She has killed my 
 captain ; she has killed two of my comrades ; 
 she has cut my throat ; and yet I bring her 
 to you alive ! " The poor boy who had stam- 
 mered out those words was, in all probability, 
 dead, and could bear no testimony. Ought I 
 to interfere ? I could only repeat what I had 
 heard the soldier say, and that would have 
 
THE COMMUNE. 155 
 
 been no proof. The other witnesses of the 
 scene were scattered, with their regiments, all 
 over France. I held my tongue. The woman 
 had perceived that she was noticed, and looked 
 at me uneasily, with something of the fiendish 
 expression I had seen in her face before. I 
 heard no more of her, and have always sup- 
 posed that she returned in peace to private 
 life. Perhaps she married, had children, and 
 loved them. 
 
 I may mention here that the majority of the 
 prisoners were set free untried, from the same 
 lack of evidence against them. Indeed, it could 
 scarcely be otherwise, for it was impossible with 
 such a mass of captives, collected under such 
 conditions of disorder, and brought in so thickly, 
 to write down in each case, with a view to future 
 trial, the nature of the charge and the names of 
 the witnesses. Futhermore, out of the 32,000 
 prisoners sent to Versailles a not inconsiderable 
 proportion were innocent of all connection with 
 the Commune, and were arrested by error or 
 accident. I will give one example of the mis- 
 takes that happened. 
 
 In the next house to me an old coachman had 
 been left, at the beginning of the first siege, to 
 look after a horse. The horse had been seized 
 
156 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 by the authorities and eaten, so the man re- 
 mained with nothing to do, waiting for the 
 return of his master. I chatted with him some- 
 times, during the latter part of the Commune, 
 as he stood smoking at the door, and a very 
 decent old fellow he was. Well, one morning, 
 during the fighting week, he was looking on at 
 the formation, in the roadway, of a column of 
 prisoners about to start, when he saw amongst 
 them a groom, who was a friend of his. He 
 stepped out to ask why he was there, and when, 
 after speaking for a minute, he turned to come 
 away, was thrust back into the column by the 
 soldiers of the escort, who, seeing him amongst 
 the prisoners, took him, not unnaturally per- 
 haps, for one of them. He shouted in terror 
 to the people on the pavement, many of 
 whom knew him, and two or three of them 
 rushed to the prison to look for me and to beg 
 me to get the poor fellow released. It happened, 
 however, that the officers on duty at that mo- 
 ment were strangers to me, and some minutes 
 passed before I found any one to whom I could 
 appeal. When at last a captain of infantry had 
 consented to interfere, the column had started, 
 and we had to run after it for some distance, 
 and to parley with the commander of the rear- 
 
THE COMMUNE. 157 
 
 guard. Luckily he was good - natured : he 
 listened to us pleasantly, believed my story, and 
 had the man brought out and delivered up to 
 me. But the shock had completely upset the 
 poor old coachman ; he could scarcely stand 
 from emotion ; he was got home and put to 
 bed ; after some days he became better, but 
 remained really ill, his heart having become 
 affected. He left Paris, without his wages, 
 directly the trains began to run, and when last I 
 heard of him, was dying in his native village. 
 
 Now I take up my story again on that Mon- 
 day. The day passed amidst scenes of pain, 
 absurdity, and ferocity ; but there was intense 
 interest in it all, it was human nature in a form 
 which is not usually beheld, and I could not 
 tear myself away. At last, however, the time 
 for dinner came, and I went in to eat it. The 
 little ones told me, with a mixture of awe and of 
 the ignorant calm of children, that they had 
 been watching the execution parties going 
 across the road into the Park, and had listened 
 to the reports of the rifles, especially to the coup 
 de grace, which seemed to have impressed them 
 most. Happily, they had not seen the actual 
 shooting, for it was hidden by the trees. 
 
 The next day, Tuesday, the same scenes con- 
 
158 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 tinued. Amongst the prisoners brought in 
 during the morning was an Englishman, the 
 charge against him being that he was wander- 
 ing in the streets, and was unable to give an 
 account of himself. He could speak no French, 
 so I was asked to question him. He told me 
 he was waiter in an eating-house for English 
 grooms in the upper part of the Champs Ely- 
 se"es, and that the master (who had formerly 
 been a trooper in the Life Guards) had stepped 
 out of his door the afternoon before to look 
 about him, in the belief that fighting round 
 there was over, and had instantly been shot 
 through the back by a sentry at the nearest 
 street-corner. The man had died in the night, 
 and the widow had sent the waiter in the morn- 
 ing to the Batignolles, to take the news to a 
 relation there. There was a disregard of possi- 
 bilities about this proceeding which indicated 
 the state of mind of that widow. I told the 
 man that, according to the news we had, fight- 
 ing was going on in every street of the Batig- 
 nolles, that he might as well try to walk to the 
 bottom of Vesuvius, and that he must go back. 
 Thereon he asked me plaintively, " But, sir, 
 can't I go to England at once ? I do so want 
 to get out of this. I am so frightened. Is 
 
THE COMMUNE. 159 
 
 there a train ? " I obtained for him a pass 
 from the general of brigade, started him off 
 again to the Champs Elysees, and hoped he 
 got there. 
 
 That day the fighting seemed to thicken up 
 again behind us : the Communards were defend- 
 ing themselves obstinately at a barricade in the 
 Place Clichy, which was about 800 yards in 
 our rear, and lost bullets began to come in at 
 the back of our house. We stuffed the windows 
 with mattresses, but the protection was incom- 
 plete. In the afternoon one of the little chil- 
 dren was opening a glass door into the hall, 
 when suddenly the pane above her smashed, and 
 the splinters fell around her. Her first thought 
 was that in some way she had broken it herself, 
 and would be scolded ; but it was seen at once 
 that a plunging bullet had come through the 
 top of the hall window above the mattress, had 
 passed just over the child's head, had struck 
 obliquely the glass panel of the opened door, 
 and had cut itself in two on the sharp edge. 
 The two halves of that bullet had fallen on the 
 floor: the child picked them up and kept them. 
 During the day forty-nine bullets got in at 
 different windows of the house, but no one was 
 touched. At night we had to lie down on the 
 
l6o SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 floor in the central corridor of the flat, so as to 
 obtain protection from the walls. 
 
 But before we went to what we called our beds, 
 the fires burst out. At twelve o'clock we counted 
 twenty-two distinct centres of conflagration in 
 the vast area of roofs, though, of course, we 
 could not tell exactly where they were. The 
 glare of the sky became so fierce that it seemed 
 almost as if the atmosphere itself was burning. 
 We gazed with consternation above us and 
 below us at the universal furnace. And the 
 great rolling masses of reddened smoke in- 
 creased the horror of the scene, for though they 
 obscured somewhat the vividness of the flames 
 and dimmed down their colours, they added a 
 particular effect of lurid, lowering, looming 
 awfulness, that could only be called hellish. 
 And, as if all this were not enough, bullets 
 went on crackling past us, and rang against 
 the walls opposite, and clinked upon the house- 
 tops, and shells were bursting near, and broken 
 glass and smashed stone and shivered slates 
 were falling in the streets, and now and then 
 a shriek of suffering arose. It was not a night 
 to be forgotten. 
 
 On the Wednesday morning a dense pall of 
 smoke hung over Paris : the sun could not 
 
THE COMMUNE. l6l 
 
 pierce it ; the gloom was altogether special, 
 unlike anything that fog produces, veiled, 
 shaded, blurred, but not opaque, or even 
 (properly) obscure. We saw the way about, 
 but the way seemed unreal. And when, amidst 
 that gloom, the news spread out that the Tuil- 
 eries, the Hotel de Ville, the Ministry of Fin- 
 ance, the Conseil d'Etat, and other buildings 
 of all sorts, had been destroyed, there grew 
 a rage amongst the peaceful portion of the 
 population that made them scream for ven- 
 geance. They had been proud of their loved 
 Paris, and much of their Paris was no more. 
 They tried, in their fury, to lynch prisoners, 
 and acts of cruelty were committed, under the 
 impulse of wild rage, that are known only in 
 times of civil war. I saw that morning five 
 men led out for execution, their arms tied back ; 
 and, as they went, a crowd of women rushed 
 at them, forced them on to their knees, struck 
 them in the face, and spat at them. If the 
 soldiers sent to shoot them had not rescued them, 
 those women would have torn their hair off. 
 
 The close firing of the day and night before 
 
 was over; the Communards had been driven 
 
 back at every point. I heard that the Rue 
 
 Royale was delivered, so, after breakfast, I 
 
 L 
 
l62 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 went down to see. Notwithstanding the chok- 
 ing smoke, a considerable number of people 
 had come out, and were staring, horror-struck, 
 at the ruins. The killed on the Versailles side 
 had been removed, but those of the Commune 
 were still strewn about; and, here and there, 
 a dead horse was being cut up into steaks by 
 famished women, whose supplies of food had 
 been stopped since the fighting began. The 
 day passed in comparative quiet, for the near- 
 est fighting was removed a mile from us. 
 
 In the evening I walked, with two officers off 
 duty, along the Boulevard des Italiens. Of 
 course there was no gas ; the moon was hidden 
 by the shroud of smoke ; the shadows were so 
 misty that they were scarcely recognisable, the 
 lighted surfaces so dim that they brightened 
 nothing. The ground was littered everywhere 
 with smashed fragments from the houses, with 
 broken glass, with leaves and branches shot off 
 the trees, with paper torn from walls where the 
 innumerable proclamations of the Commune had 
 been posted up, with twisted bits of metal and 
 sometimes abandoned arms. All this ruin 
 crunched under our feet as we advanced along 
 the centre of the roadway, in single file, five 
 vards from each other, so as to offer smaller 
 
THE COMMUNE. 163 
 
 marks in the event of our being fired at. We 
 got as far as the Rue Montmartre^. but there 
 we were stopped by officers, who told us it 
 was impossible to go farther, because there was 
 an untaken barricade in front. So back we 
 came, utterly alone, staring round us at the 
 murky sky, the dusky moon, the tattered trees, 
 the shot-marked houses, and listening to the 
 screeching of rifles, the grating jar of mitrail- 
 leuses, and the crackling of our own steps. 
 
 Could that be Paris ? Were we, in reality, 
 on the Boulevard des Italiens? 
 
 Several times the sentries at the street-corners 
 called to me to join the chaine at the fires and 
 help to pass the water -buckets (as was the 
 usage then), but my companions answered for 
 me and got me clear. 
 
 After this infernal scene the comparative still- 
 ness of the Boulevard Malesherbes was quite 
 soothing. We walked slowly, talking of the 
 day's work, and had got up nearly to my house, 
 when one of the officers, gazing ahead, ex- 
 claimed, " Why, what's that ? No, surely, it 
 cannot be a cab ! " 
 
 A cab in a street of Paris that night was 
 about as probable as an ostrich on an iceberg ; 
 and yet a cab there really was, and at my door ! 
 
164 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 I stared at it in utter incomprehension. At that 
 instant the concierge sauntered out, and I cried 
 to him, " What is that cab doing here ? Where 
 on earth has it come from ?" 
 
 " Gentleman just arrived for you, sir. He's 
 gone up." 
 
 Never did I leap up-stairs so fast. My door 
 was open : I rushed into the hall ; and there, 
 taking off an overcoat, was Oliphant. 
 
 He had returned to England two days before 
 from the United States, had stopped a few 
 hours in London to arrange with the 'Times' 
 to recommence his correspondence, and to get 
 from the Foreign Office a despatch to carry 
 to the Embassy as a sort of passport, and then 
 he had come over with the intention of reaching 
 Paris somehow. As the Gare du Nord was 
 under fire that day, no train could enter, so 
 he had been turned out at St Denis early in 
 the afternoon. After some seeking he had dis- 
 covered an adventurous cabman who, for money, 
 was willing to run risks, had been driven, miles 
 round, by Courbevoie, had managed to reach 
 the Porte Maillot, had declared himself to the 
 guard there as a special messenger to the 
 British Embassy, and, at last, at ten o'clock, 
 had reached the Arch of Triumph, to look 
 
THE COMMUNE, 165 
 
 down on Paris blazing. After filling his memory 
 with that picture, he had turned ^to the left, 
 and had come to me. 
 
 I told the cabman to find a stable somewhere, 
 and then I gave Oliphant supper, which he 
 needed badly, got a bed arranged for him, and 
 talked to him till four. 
 
 Next morning I obtained a local pass from 
 the general of division nearest us, and we two, 
 after leaving the despatch at the Embassy, 
 started off to try to reach the headquarters 
 of General Vinoy, who commanded, under Mar- 
 shal MacMahon, the army on the left bank 
 of the Seine. Our object was to ask him, as 
 old acquaintances, for two permis de circulation 
 for all Paris, so as to be able to go anywhere, 
 and escape the ftre-chaines. We succeeded in 
 our attempt, and we profited by the opportunity 
 to see a good deal. One of the results was that 
 we recognised very fully, from what we saw 
 and heard, that if ever an army had sufficient 
 reasons for relentless repression, it was on that 
 occasion. It was said at the time, by outsiders, 
 that it was monstrous to go on executing 
 prisoners as was done that week. But, in all 
 truth, the provocation was atrocious. Half the 
 city was on fire, and the other half was more 
 
l66 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 or less destroyed ; the fighting was furious ; and 
 the shame of the whole proceeding was infinitely 
 augmented by its being performed under the 
 eyes of the German army, which rubbed its 
 hands with approval. Finally, and perhaps 
 more than all, the fierce blood of civil war 
 was up, and cruelties and vengeances were em- 
 ployed which, happily, are now unknown in 
 international war. Of the 14,000 Communards 
 killed that week, 8000 were executed ; and at 
 the moment the softest-hearted of the spectators 
 declared it was not half enough. 
 
 On the Thursday evening the situation had 
 so far improved that a dozen Englishmen, who 
 had run over to see what was passing, managed 
 to get into the place. Some of them were 
 caught at once for the chaines, and were not 
 liberated until, drenched through, they had 
 passed buckets for some hours. Some went 
 about with us on the Friday. With one of 
 them (Mr Cartwright of Aynhoe) we had an 
 odd experience. We walked up the Rue Lafa- 
 yette until we got directly under the line of 
 bombardment from Montmartre, where Ver- 
 sailles batteries were established, to the Pere 
 la Chaise, which was still held by the Com- 
 munards. The shells flew over our heads some 
 
THE COMMUNE. 167 
 
 hundred yards up, and we positively saw them 
 pass ! As their trajectory was high, and as 
 we stood at the centre of the chord of the 
 arc they described, our eyes had time to follow, 
 and we perceived, at almost every shot, a black 
 thread flash through the air. 
 
 On the Saturday morning Oliphant and I 
 attempted a drive in the cab, and, showing 
 our passes every five minutes, managed to 
 make a real journey. We knew that the whole 
 left bank of the Seine was cleared out, and we 
 were assured (though incorrectly, as we found) 
 that, on the right bank, fighting was continuing 
 only in the quarters of Belleville and Pere la 
 Chaise. So we started down the Champs 
 Elysees, past the Palais de PIndustrie, in the 
 glass roof of which every pane seemed smashed, 
 and made our first stoppage at the still burning 
 Palace of the Legion of Honour, on the Quai 
 d'Orsay, in order to peer into the cellars, where 
 all the bedding from the Legion's schools at 
 St Denis, Ecouen, and Les Loges had been 
 piled up for safety before the siege. A thou- 
 sand woollen mattresses, tightly stacked, had 
 charred, in the absence of all draught, into a 
 mass of silent, stagnant fire : it was strange 
 that so vast and so intense a furnace (the heat 
 
l68 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 of which was scarcely endurable, even at the 
 distance where we stood) could be so still, so 
 hushed, so peaceful : not a flicker could be 
 seen, not a flutter could be heard ; all was 
 mute, motionless, white-hot smoulder. 
 
 Farther on, as we followed the quays, the 
 signs of battle became more frequent, and again 
 we got out of the cab to gaze about us. The 
 bodies of several Communards had been thrown 
 over the walls on to the river strand, to put 
 them out of the way, and were lying there 
 almost in the water. More dead horses were 
 being cut up for food, and a horrible mess they 
 made. People were out, but said they were 
 afraid to leave their own immediate district. 
 
 At last we reached the Pont d'Austerlitz, 
 crossed it, and became aware that we were 
 nearing actual fighting. The shooting sounded 
 closer, the dead were more numerous, and, from 
 the fresh colour of the blood-pools round them, 
 they seemed to have fallen recently. A sentry 
 at the farther end of the bridge told us that 
 the barricade there (round which we had diffi- 
 culty in squeezing and lifting our cab) had only 
 been carried that morning, and that at that 
 moment the troops had not got beyond the 
 Place de la Bastille, which was close by. As 
 
THE COMMUNE. 169 
 
 we emerged on to the Boulevard Contrescarpe, 
 along the edge of the Canal, and caught sight 
 of the spectacle it presented, Oliphant ex- 
 claimed, " A battle-field ! " There must have 
 been forty or fifty bodies there, lying, in some 
 instances, so close together that our cab had 
 to make zigzags to avoid driving over them. 
 One man, on the pavement, had fallen on his 
 hands and knees against a bench, and had 
 stiffened in that position : his head hung down 
 between his arms, and his long hair dangled 
 on the ground. That sight upset our cabman ; 
 for a time he was unable to go on, and shut 
 his eyes and trembled. "We shall have to 
 put him inside, and do the driving ourselves," 
 remarked Oliphant. But he got his nerves 
 together, and managed to keep hold of the 
 reins. As we neared the Place de la Bastille 
 we saw, amidst thick smoke, half a battery of 
 artillery, in position, firing down the Faubourg 
 St Antoine, and an officer came running to- 
 wards us, shouting furiously the order to stop. 
 We showed our passes from General Vinoy, 
 and asked to see the colonel in command, to 
 whom we revealed our scheme of driving 
 straight on and of returning westwards by the 
 line of the inner Boulevards. He swore at us 
 
170 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 copiously, and told us, with exuberant exple- 
 tives, that if we did not go back at once, he 
 would send us, under arrest, to headquarters. 
 We admitted afterwards that he had some 
 justification for the view he took ; but, at 
 the moment, we were vexed, and thought him 
 rude. 
 
 We had to return, humbly, by the way we 
 had come ; only when we reached the river 
 we did not recross it, but remained on the 
 north bank, turning to the right along the 
 quays and into back streets, in nearly every 
 one of which the paving-stones had been pulled 
 up to form shelter-trenches or small barricades. 
 The result was that the roadway was composed 
 mainly of alternate wells and walls, into and 
 over which we floundered, the cab bounding, 
 tumbling, and straining tumultuously : why it 
 did not smash up into molecules will remain 
 for ever an unsolved mystery. At last we 
 reached the burned Hotel de Ville. 
 
 We stopped in the middle of the great Place, 
 and stared. We were alone ; not another soul 
 was in sight. For the first few moments, in- 
 stinctively, we drew somewhat away from each 
 other, to avoid speaking in the presence of such 
 lamentable ruin. We both felt that silence was 
 
THE COMMUNE. 17! 
 
 the truest and most respectful sympathy we 
 could offer. And when we did begin to talk, 
 it was in a whisper. The destruction was 
 terrific ; but the desolation was more appalling 
 than the destruction, and the solitude doubled 
 the desolation. French hands had wrought 
 that havoc, but there was not a Frenchman 
 there to grieve. For some minutes we gazed 
 sadly, and then the habit of action resumed 
 its influence, and Oliphant, moving towards 
 the gaping central gateway, said gently, "Let 
 us go in." 
 
 Now, it might have been natural for firemen, 
 in working uniform, to " go in " there ; but it 
 was absolutely unnatural that ordinary people 
 with ordinary clothes should attempt to do so. 
 The four outer walls, calcined, roofless, window- 
 less, still served as an enclosure ; but, so far 
 as we could see, the entire interior had disap- 
 peared into confused heaps of broken, blackened, 
 shapeless stones, charred timber, and bent iron. 
 Such bits of inside walls as remained standing 
 served merely as props for the piles of debris 
 that leaned against them ; half-melted gutter- 
 pipes, with long stalactites of lead that had 
 chilled as it dropped, hung about like trellises ; 
 from every pore of the fuming wreck streamed 
 
172 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 up brown smoke; loosened fragments dropped 
 and roused thick echoes, that much we could 
 perceive through the yawning openings : what 
 more could we discover if we went in ? But, 
 all the same, we did go in. 
 
 As we emerged from under the scorched dis- 
 jointed archway, a block of marble cornice fell, 
 from somewhere, almost on to Oliphant. He 
 jumped aside, exclaiming, "That was close!" 
 We found our way barred at once, and in every 
 direction, by steep tall slopes of riven pitchy 
 stones ; the smoke half stifled us ; the heat was 
 intense ; our eyes were stung by the scorching 
 dancing glimmer in the air. We looked about, 
 apparently in vain, for a path to anywhere. 
 At last Oliphant pointed to what looked like 
 a cliff of coal, some twenty feet high, away in 
 a shadow on our right, and said, " I think we 
 could get up there." When we reached the 
 foot of it, after scrambling over blocks, and 
 bars, and chasms, we found that, like the rest, 
 it was a nearly perpendicular declivity of cinders 
 and smelted rubble, scorched, murky, burning 
 hot, tottering, and slippery with greasy soot. 
 It would have been awkward to get up, even 
 if it had been clean ; but with its covering of 
 thick oily smut, it seemed almost unclimbable. 
 
THE COMMUNE. 173 
 
 And yet we did climb up it. We burned our 
 boots, we blacked our clothes, we bruised our 
 knees, we chipped and broiled our hands ; but 
 we clambered to the summit of the incline, and, 
 from the crest, looked down into what had been 
 the famous inner court of the Hotel de Ville, 
 where had stood the escalier d'honneur and the 
 glass cascade. It was a crater after an eruption, 
 a vast fiercely ravined cavity of deadened fire. 
 The smoke blew out of it in volcanic clouds, 
 and inflamed our eyes and throats still more, 
 and the stench sickened us. We were told 
 afterwards that several Communards had got 
 drunk in the cellars, had gone to sleep, and had 
 been slowly grilled away amongst the embers. 
 It was impossible to stop there even Oliphant 
 avowed that. We looked round intently, made 
 a great effort to fix the scene upon our mem- 
 ories, and slid down, somehow, to the ground. 
 We ran out into the open, took deep breaths 
 of air, laughed at each other's grime, and drove 
 straight home to clean ourselves. 
 
 Next day (Sunday, 28th May) the last de- 
 fences of the Commune were stormed by the 
 Versaillais, and the insurrection came to its 
 end. That afternoon 6000 prisoners, in one 
 column, guarded by several regiments of cavalry, 
 
174 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 were brought along the Boulevards on their way 
 to Versailles. We stood, to see them pass, at 
 the top of the Rue de la Paix, in an enormous 
 crowd : all Paris had come out, exploding with 
 satisfaction, to hoot the captives. I have looked 
 on at many scenes of grievous misery and degra- 
 dation, but never have I beheld any sight so 
 strangely painful as that march past. The ex- 
 ceptional aspect of abasement of that mass of 
 wretches arose from an altogether special cause. 
 It was produced neither by the prostrate con- 
 dition of many of the prisoners (several of whom 
 could scarcely drag themselves along), nor by 
 the hideous expression of most of their faces, nor 
 by the merciless brutality with which they were 
 treated by both the soldiers and the mob : it 
 sprang from a totally different characteristic of 
 the sight a characteristic that nobody had ever 
 beheld before, nor perhaps ever imagined. Al- 
 most every one of them had been forced to turn 
 his coat inside out ! It was the astonishing 
 effect of that livery of shame, worn by such a 
 mass of men at once, that rendered the scene 
 so matchlessly abject : we two almost shivered 
 as we stared at that spectacle of ignominy. 
 We had not conceived it possible that vile 
 dishonour could express itself so poignantly. 
 
THE COMMUNE. 175 
 
 Even the grotesqueness of the parti-coloured 
 sleeve-linings many of the pairs being of dif- 
 ferent stuffs and colours, and nearly all of them 
 in rags was lamentable, not laughable. And 
 yet, after all, notwithstanding the extraordin- 
 arily repulsive features of that piebald proces- 
 sion, it cannot be denied that it was a fitting 
 and illustrative ending to the odious and imbe- 
 cile Commune. 
 
 On the Monday morning I walked with Mr 
 Cartwright along the line of the fortifications 
 from the Porte Maillot to the Point du Jour, 
 at the end of Auteuil, in order to see the damage 
 done by the bombardment. The smashing had 
 occurred capriciously : some houses had almost 
 escaped ; others were carried away down to the 
 very ground ; others again had fronts or sides 
 shot off, but were otherwise little injured. In 
 two cases, where the facades alone had disap- 
 peared, the furniture of four floors was still 
 standing almost undisturbed in the opened 
 rooms as in a doll's house. But the general 
 total of destruction, considerable and wide- 
 spread as it was, seemed relatively small when 
 we considered that it was the result of several 
 weeks of continuous shelling. The fortifications 
 themselves were not much knocked about, 
 
m +' f - . ... **> 
 
 176 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 though, in places, the ground behind them 
 was ploughed deeply. 
 
 The cleaning up of Paris, which commenced 
 on the Sunday, directly after the passage of 
 the prisoners, was pretty well completed by 
 the Monday night. The rapidity with which 
 it was performed astonished everybody : it was 
 only achieved because everybody helped. Of 
 course certain signs of fighting remained vis- 
 ible; but the barricades, the holes, the fallen 
 trees, the dirt, vanished in twenty-four hours. 
 The dead were carted off; the paving-stones 
 were laid back roughly in their places; the 
 rubbish was swept into heaps. The sensa- 
 tion of delivery was so keen amongst the pop- 
 ulation that they almost rejoiced. 
 
 I terminate these recollections by quoting a 
 curious definition of the Commune, given to 
 me by a man whose name is known in England, 
 but whose words have been heard by few Eng- 
 lishmen. 
 
 About the middle of June, Oliphant's mother 
 and Mr Harris arrived together in Paris from 
 America. Mr Harris remained there for three 
 months, during which period he conveyed to 
 me, with the assumption of inspiration which 
 was proper to him, a certain number of remark- 
 
THE COMMUNE. 177 
 
 ably expressed opinions. One of them described 
 the Commune as " a yell from the lower man ; 
 an up-seething from the turbid sources ; a snatch 
 at the impossible and the undefined; a failure 
 where success would have meant a nation's 
 shame." 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 MR WORTH. 
 
 TOWARDS the end of August 1871, I listened one 
 night to a conversation between particularly 
 competent persons about the probable effects 
 of the war on the trade and prosperity of France. 
 Most of the talkers were convinced that, just as, 
 by an unvarying natural law, the number of births 
 increases always, in every land, after a sudden 
 reduction of population by disease or battle, so 
 would the general commerce of France enter 
 rapidly into a period of remarkable activity, to 
 make up for the year just lost. As concerned 
 Paris in particular there was, however, less 
 hopefulness : it was argued that the trades of 
 Paris were, in the main, of an altogether special 
 nature ; that they ministered almost entirely to 
 artificial needs ; that their marked characteristic 
 was to supply the unnecessary and even the frivol- 
 
MR WORTH. 179 
 
 ous ; that ornaments, artificial flowers, the varied 
 details of clothing, furniture, what tjie Germans 
 call "gallantry wares," and articles de Paris, in- 
 teresting as they were as local products, scarce- 
 ly counted amongst the real elements of the 
 national dealings of France ; and that, in con- 
 sequence, there was no sufficient reason for 
 anticipating that Paris would share proportion- 
 ately in the prompt revival of ordinary business 
 which was predicted confidently for the rest of 
 the country. 1 
 
 As I walked home I thought over all this, 
 and the more I thought the more the subject 
 stretched. All sorts of additional ideas started 
 up; my fancies grew wider and clearer; after 
 branching in several directions they assumed 
 suddenly a specific shape. I asked myself what 
 had been the effect of the war on the most 
 conspicuous, the most widely ramified, the most 
 labour-employing of all the unnecessary indus- 
 tries of Paris on dressmaking? 
 
 The answer came almost at the same instant 
 as the question. A scheme evolved itself in my 
 head. I would get up the subject, and would 
 write an article for ' Blackwood 'on " The 
 
 1 This gloomy expectation was not realised ; the trade of Paris 
 recovered as quickly as that of tnc nation at large. 
 
l8o SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 Influence of the Siege of Paris on the Art and 
 Trade of Dressmaking " ! I would inaugurate 
 the study of the psychology of women's gowns 
 in their relation to both international and civil 
 war ! What an utterly new idea ! 
 
 That was the result to be attained. The 
 means I devised for achieving it were fully 
 worthy of so grand an end. I would go next 
 day to Mr Worth himself for the requisite in- 
 formation ! 
 
 The fact that I was a total stranger to Mr 
 Worth did not seem to me a difficulty : I felt 
 scarcely any hesitation at the idea of thrusting 
 myself upon him. I had been told, it is true, 
 that he was as busy as a Cabinet Minister ; that 
 it was more difficult to obtain an audience from 
 him than from a reigning sovereign ; that he was 
 a loftier personage, by far, than any living poet. 
 But there were considerations of another nature 
 which encouraged me to hope that I should van- 
 quish all these obstacles, that I should succeed, 
 in spite of them, in obtaining admission to his 
 presence, and that, once there, he would conde- 
 scend to answer my audacious questions. 
 
 Those considerations were that if ever there 
 was a real public man, a veritable figurehead of 
 his day, a man who, all by himself, represented 
 
MR WORTH. l8l 
 
 a great contemporaneous fact, it was precisely 
 Mr Worth. In his sole person he wa the com- 
 plete realisation, not only of the artistic theory 
 and the commercial practice of women's dress, 
 but also (I supposed at least) of its abstract es- 
 sence and hidden meanings ; he incarnated the 
 matter, the morality, and the philosophy of the 
 problem. He was all this so completely that 
 the perfection of his success had enabled him to 
 win the infinitely rare distinction of bestowing 
 his name on his period : just as history talks of 
 "the age of Pericles," of "the Augustan era," 
 of "the times of the Medici," and of "le siecle 
 de Louis Quatorze," so also had I often heard 
 the Second Empire described as "1'epoque de 
 Worth." In such a position he surely owed 
 himself to the world, especially to humble in- 
 quirers like myself who sought simply to sit at 
 his feet and listen to his words of wisdom. The 
 more I reflected on these elements of the situa- 
 tion, the more did I incline to the impression 
 that, indiscreet as I might be in troubling him, 
 he would scarcely say no, and that he would not 
 shield himself remorselessly behind what was 
 then called in the French Chamber "the wall 
 of private life." His personality was too great, 
 too dominating, too full of public responsibilities, 
 
l82 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 to permit him to refuse to enlighten his genera- 
 tion on such a virgin question as the connection 
 between frocks and battles. 
 
 To inspire myself with still more courage, I 
 quoted aloud the words of the Persian poem, 
 "The moon looks on many night-flowers; but 
 the night-flowers see only one moon." Mr 
 Worth was the moon ; I was one of the night- 
 flowers ; surely the moon would not decline to 
 shine on me if I appealed to it for a ray. 
 
 In the morning I prepared a list of interroga- 
 tories. At five o'clock I walked into the first 
 floor of No. 5 Rue de la Paix. 
 
 Mr Worth was in. I sent my card to him. 
 Within five minutes he was standing before 
 me ! 
 
 I said to him, " Forgive me for disturbing 
 you. I know how occupied you are, and yet I 
 have come to ask for an hour of your time. I 
 want to write an article on the influence of the 
 war on the dressmaking trade of Paris. Such 
 an article would, I am sure, be read with inter- 
 est, in the present condition of public feeling. 
 You typify, for everybody, the entire idea of 
 Paris dressmaking. I want to ask you ques- 
 tions. Will you kindly listen to them ? Will 
 you, still more kindly, answer them ? " 
 
MR WORTH. 183 
 
 He stared curiously ^perhaps rather suspici- 
 ously) at me, hesitated for a few seconds, and 
 then said rapidly 
 
 " Yes. I shall be very pleased to have a chat 
 with you, and to tell you what I can. I never 
 was asked about such things as that. But we 
 can't talk here. At this instant seventeen per- 
 sons are waiting for me in nine rooms. Come 
 to dine with me to-morrow at my country house. 
 Take the 6.30 train from St Lazare to Suresnes. 
 My son will meet you at the station and will 
 show you the way. A demain. Glad to make 
 your acquaintance. Of course you won't dress." 
 
 I went away delighted. The great man had 
 not repelled my venturesome demand ; on the 
 contrary he had admitted it, not only benig- 
 nantly, but with a cordiality which filled me with 
 hopes. 
 
 Next day, at seven, I got out of the train at 
 Suresnes. On the platform I found waiting for 
 me a very good-looking, charmingly-mannered 
 young man, who introduced himself as Mr 
 Worth fils (he is now the head of the firm, I 
 believe), and in his agreeable company 1 walked 
 to the great red brick chateau. He told me 
 that his father had not arrived from Paris, but 
 that he would be down directly. This was so 
 
184 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 true that, before I had passed a minute on the 
 terrace gazing at the view over the Bois towards 
 Paris, I heard the gallop of a horse tearing up 
 the hill, and Mr Worth, spattered with mud and 
 foam, rode in at the gate. He had come down, 
 he said, in a quarter of an hour. 
 
 We stood chatting for a couple of minutes, 
 and then he turned to the house to change his 
 clothes. 
 
 At the same instant I saw appear on the ver- 
 andah a lady in white. Her elegance, her grace, 
 her winningness were such that I stood still in 
 admiration. 
 
 " My wife," observed Mr Worth. " Let me 
 introduce you to her." 
 
 Now, I had heard from public rumour that Mr 
 Worth, when he was cutter at Gagelin's shop in 
 the Rue de Richelieu, had married one of the 
 young persons employed there. I had heard 
 additionally, from the same source of informa- 
 tion, that Madame Worth, with the adaptability 
 of many of her race, had fitted herself admirably 
 to her new situation, and had become in every- 
 thing a lady. But, though I had seen many 
 transformations of that nature, no previous ex- 
 perience had prepared me for what I beheld at 
 that moment. With the ease of an accom- 
 
MR WORTH. 185 
 
 plished woman of the world, with combined 
 dignity and simplicity, with infinite^ gentleness 
 of movement, she made two steps towards me, 
 smiling graciously, bowing slightly, welcome on 
 her face. She wore a high but short-sleeved 
 white satin dress, striped with bands of black 
 velvet ; a profusion of lace hung over her ; long 
 Suede gloves reached almost to her shoulders; 
 two or three bracelets were on her arms ; a dia- 
 mond was half hidden here and there in the lace. 
 Never did white satin appear to me to be so com- 
 pletely absorbed into the person of its wearer ; 
 she and her gown were so absolutely one that, for 
 months afterwards, Madame Worth and white 
 satin presented themselves to my thoughts as 
 synonymous, simultaneous, identical, unsever- 
 able. I could neither disjoin them, nor conceive 
 one without the other. All other women in 
 white satin appeared to me impostors. It never 
 occurred to me, as I looked at her, that such a 
 gown was at all out of place, where no one else 
 was dressed. She was Madame Worth : her 
 name purported dress; who on earth should 
 wear white satin, even at six o'clock in the 
 morning, if she did not ? Her right to the ex- 
 tremest elegancies of raiment, to the most ex- 
 cessive daintinesses of finish, was more com- 
 
l86 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 plete than that of any other woman whatever. 
 Besides, she was so sympathetically attractive 
 and had so grand an air that the dress was, after 
 all, merely one of the details of her presence. 
 With all this I noticed instantly that she, a 
 Frenchwoman, had a charm that was distinctly 
 Spanish, far more Spanish than Slav (the only 
 two purely national types of charm) ; so Spanish, 
 indeed, was it of the fair variety that if I had 
 seen her in the drawing-room of a great house, 
 and had been told she was the Marquesa de la 
 Vega de Granada, daughter of the Conde Duque 
 de Valladolid y de Burgos, I should have thought 
 the statement perfectly natural. 
 
 As her husband went into the house, she 
 turned to stroll with me on the terrace, saying, 
 in a soft voice, " I hear you want Mr Worth to 
 give you information about the effect of the 
 siege upon our business. He will be very 
 pleased to do so, and I hope you will let me 
 read what you write about it." 
 
 I triumphed ! I was making the acquaint- 
 ance of this most delightful woman ; I was 
 acquiring a totally new perception of the pos- 
 sibilities and the meanings of white satin ; and 
 I was about to be instructed, by the greatest 
 master in the world, in the mysteries of the 
 
MR WORTH. 187 
 
 psychological relationship between gowns and 
 politics, fashions and sieges, women% vanities 
 and wars ! What a success my projected article 
 would have ! Who ever had such good fortune ! 
 
 The conversation, however, was not active. 
 The delightful woman was a little silent : I 
 perceived, during the evening, that it seemed 
 to be her practice to leave talking to her hus- 
 band. But what a delicate picture of a delicate 
 woman ! I remembered Napoleon's exclama- 
 tion, " Nothing on earth is so pretty as a 
 woman in white in a garden ! " I agreed en- 
 tirely with Napoleon. 
 
 Presently Mr Worth came out again, in a 
 rusty brown jacket and a battered straw hat 
 without a crown ; whereon it occurred to me 
 that Madame Worth was dressed for both of 
 them (and, indeed, for all of us), which still 
 further explained the white satin. 
 
 We dined (Mr Worth keeping on the crown- 
 less straw hat at table) in a vast greenhouse 
 which seemed to cover an acre of surface, 
 amidst a forest of palm - leaves, tree - ferns, 
 variegated verdures, and fantastic flowers. 
 Some quiet persons, who did not speak, and 
 who, I gathered, were relations from the 
 country, joined us at dinner. There was a 
 
l88 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 perplexing mixture of patriarchal simplicity 
 and of the assertiveness of modern money, of 
 thoroughly natural unaffectedness and of showy 
 surroundings, of total carelessness in some things 
 and of infinite white satin in others, which was 
 so new to me that, at first, I felt a little bewil- 
 dered, and wondered whether I was dining with 
 Haroun al Raschid in one of the disguises he so 
 often wore. 
 
 After the soup, Mr Worth began, " Now put 
 your queries. I am ready." 
 
 I commenced my speech. I explained that 
 my original object had been to obtain materials 
 for an article for " Maga " on the effects pro- 
 duced by the war on Paris dressmaking; but 
 that he and his wife had received me with such 
 kindness that I felt emboldened to extend my 
 questions, and that, with his permission, I 
 would ask also for information on the meta- 
 physical aspects of dressmaking; on the influ- 
 ence of dress on the formation of women's 
 character; on its share in constituting their 
 natures in different lands ; on the motives, im- 
 pulses, temptations provoked by it; on the 
 moral effects of dress ; concerning which most 
 interesting elements of the subject, he, of all 
 men, was most capable to instruct me. 
 
MR WORTH. 189 
 
 " Hum," said Mr Worth, when I had finished. 
 " I don't quite follow you in all that.*- I never 
 thought of it in that way. The war has done 
 me harm, of course, as it has done harm to 
 everybody. I have lost a year by it ; but I 
 daresay I shall pick up again, for orders are 
 coming in very fast. But as to all those other 
 things you mention, I shall have to think a bit. 
 Influence of dress on women's character ? Why 
 what, exactly, do you mean ?" 
 
 "To put the matter, to begin with, in a 
 narrower form, With what object do women 
 dress?" 
 
 "What a question!" laughed Mr Worth. 
 " Do you mean to say you don't know ? Why, 
 women dress, of course, for two reasons : for 
 the pleasure of making themselves smart, and 
 for the still greater joy of snuffing out the 
 others." 
 
 " And never for their own persons only ? 
 Never to frame in and set up their individuality 
 by clothing it in what befits it best ? Never 
 to harmonise their essence with their substance, 
 their self with their surroundings?" 
 
 " I must say again that I don't quite follow 
 you. If you mean whether they dress to suit 
 their bodies, according to their own ideas of 
 
SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 suitability, I should say no at once ; because, 
 you see, the women who come to me want to 
 ask for my ideas, not to follow out their own. 
 They deliver themselves to me in confidence, 
 and I decide for them ; that makes them happy. 
 If I tell them they are suited, they need no 
 further evidence. My signature to their gown 
 suffices!" 
 
 " Do you never find a rebel amongst them ? 
 Does no one ever claim the right of personal 
 invention and choice?" 
 
 " Choice ? Yes, certainly ; but only between 
 my various suggestions. And very few do even 
 that ; most of them leave it all to me. But as 
 for invention, no. My business is not only to 
 execute but especially to invent. My invention 
 is the secret of my success. I don't want people 
 to invent for themselves ; if they did, I should 
 lose half my trade." 
 
 Madame Worth looked affectionately at her 
 husband (they seemed to be a most attached 
 couple) ; then turned to me, raised her finger 
 to her forehead, and said, " It is here, you know ; 
 here lies the secret of his success !" 
 
 I went on all the same, " What a pity it is 
 you will not enlighten me as to the influence of 
 dress on character !" 
 
MR WORTH. IQ1 
 
 " I tell you I don't see it," answered Mr 
 Worth. " Perhaps I'm too busy to 4 have time 
 to make observations of that sort. I've a deal 
 to do, you know : I've twelve hundred people 
 in my employment, who need some looking 
 after ; and I can't stop on the roadside to pick 
 flowers. I thought it was about the war that 
 you wanted to know?" 
 
 " So I do. But the truth is, the subject grows 
 upon me. As I talk to you, I see more and 
 more in it. If I were not afraid of being in- 
 discreet, I should put a hundred questions to 
 you about its endless developments. The whole 
 thing grows bigger to me as I sit opposite you 
 and imagine all that you must know about it." 
 
 " Oh, of course, I do know a good deal, but 
 it's all personal. There's the subject of pay- 
 ments, for instance, a very big subject indeed, 
 from my point of view. Then there are the 
 jealousies, and the envies, and the hatings, and 
 the love-makings. Oh, I know a quantity about 
 all that. Is that what you mean ?" 
 
 " No, no ; not that at all. That is, as you 
 say, personal. That would not interest English 
 readers. What I am looking for is general : I 
 want to discover what are the great principles 
 which govern the action of dress in the con- 
 
IQ2 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 stitution of feminine temperaments and the 
 guidance of feminine conduct." 
 
 " I suspect I know more about all that than 
 my husband does," put in Madame Worth, 
 laughing. 
 
 "Ah, but it is I, not you, who am being 
 examined," retorted Mr Worth, laughing still 
 more; "and I mean to keep the answering to 
 myself." Then turning to me, he went on. 
 " Now, suppose I tell it all to you in a personal 
 form, then you could stitch it together in a 
 general form, and so make a gown of it your- 
 self I mean an article." 
 
 " Really, I'm afraid I couldn't manage that," 
 was my reply. " I shouldn't feel justified in 
 building arguments on individual facts, each 
 one of which might be exceptional. If I am 
 to set forth the effects of this war on one of 
 the most important branches of the trade of 
 Paris, and, more particularly, if I am to try 
 to analyse the interaction of dress and char- 
 acter in women, I must have your direct pilot- 
 age on every point and your authority to quote 
 your opinion. My own fancies would be ab- 
 solutely valueless without your aid ; at the best 
 they would be nothing more than the pins with 
 which you fasten stuffs together." 
 
MR WORTH. 193 
 
 " But I'm ready to tell you everything that 
 I know. Only I suspect I don't kndw. Those 
 ' developments ' you alluded to just now are 
 rather outside my day's work. And yet I 
 should really like to tell you if I could. Let 
 me try what some of my stories will do for 
 you. When you have heard them you can 
 decide whether they are of any use." 
 
 Whereon for half an hour he narrated tales 
 which, assuredly, were excessively amusing, but 
 were of no sort of use for the purposes I had 
 in view. 
 
 At last I ventured to put in an interruption 
 and to ask, " Now, out of all that, what is your 
 impression (to take one single point) as to the 
 average amount which women spend on dress?" 
 
 "There is no average at all. How could 
 there be ? In every case the expenditure is 
 individual, and is governed by circumstances. 
 There are quantities of very respectable women 
 in Paris who don't spend more than 60 a-year 
 on their toilet, and who, for that sort of type, 
 really don't look bad. But you mean, of course, 
 the women who come to me, who are of a 
 different class. Well, they get through anything 
 you like, from a minimum of 400 to a maximum 
 of 4000. I know several women who reach 
 
 N 
 
IQ4 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 somewhere about 4000 ; not every year the same 
 sum sometimes more, sometimes less. Why, 
 some of them especially Russians need 150 
 a-year for shoes alone, without counting boots." 
 
 "Are the Russians more extravagant, then, 
 than all the others?" 
 
 " It doesn't run in nations, exactly. Often 
 it's a Russian, as I say, or it's an American. 
 Sometimes it's a Peruvian or a Chilian ; some- 
 times, even, it's a Frenchwoman, though the 
 French are usually rather careful; economy is 
 in the blood, you know. Here and there a 
 Spaniard or a Southern Italian may turn pro- 
 digal, or people of some of the outlying races. 
 But rarely does an Englishwoman get really 
 wasteful, and I have not known a single case 
 of a German reaching any such amount as I 
 am talking of. Some of the Americans are 
 great spenders ; all of them (all of them 
 that I see, I mean) love dress, even if they 
 are not extravagant over it. And I like to 
 dress them, for, as I say occasionally, 'they 
 have faith, figures, and francs,' faith to be- 
 lieve in me, figures that I can put into shape, 
 francs to pay my bills. Yes, I like to dress 
 Americans." 
 
 I was beginning to despair somewhat, but I 
 
MR WORTH. 195 
 
 went on, persistingly, " You said just now that 
 orders are coming in very fast. Am I to infer 
 that, according to your present impression, 
 your branch of the commerce of Paris will 
 rally rapidly from the blow the war gave 
 it?" 
 
 " Oh, certainly. I haven't a doubt about it. 
 Women can't do without new clothes : they 
 may deprive themselves of all sorts of other 
 things, but they won't shut off that one. They 
 can't. I'm quite sure that, by the end of the 
 year, we shall be going on as if nothing had 
 happened. Payments will be, for a time, more 
 difficult to get in French payments, I mean ; 
 foreign payments are not affected by the war 
 but trade itself will become as active as ever." 
 
 " Two nights ago I heard the contrary opin- 
 ion expressed. It was argued that, as the 
 main object of the work of Paris is to supply 
 the unnecessary and the frivolous, that work 
 will not be resumed rapidly." 
 
 "Who were the silly people that said that? 
 Why, it is precisely the unnecessary and the 
 frivolous that everybody comes to buy in Paris. 
 People don't travel from everywhere to the 
 Boulevards in order to lay in stocks of timber, 
 or raw sugar, or ships' ballast." 
 
196 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 " Ah, my dear Mr Worth," I exclaimed, with 
 delight, " now you're corning to the philosophy of 
 the thing. That is just one of the points I want 
 you to comment upon. Go on ; pray go on." 
 
 " Philosophy? it's self-evident reality. There's 
 no philosophy in it not a bit. Do you ever hear 
 of a woman or a man, either who did come 
 here for anything but the unnecessary ? " 
 
 " Perhaps not. But, you see, that is exactly 
 what I should like you to show me in its de- 
 tailed application to dressmaking." 
 
 "I will. Here are some of my experiences 
 in proof of it." 
 
 And he went on for another half-hour pouring 
 out a second series of diverting stories, all bear- 
 ing, certainly, on the energetic pursuit of the 
 unnecessary by clients of his, but with not one 
 word in them that I could utilise. 
 
 The cruel impression grew in me that my pro- 
 posed article would never be written, from the 
 unexpected impossibility of obtaining the neces- 
 sary information. Yet I struggled on, and asked 
 again 
 
 " But, once more, about the effects of the 
 war? Do I gather quite correctly that, in 
 your opinion, it will not exercise any durably 
 injurious effect on the dressmaking trade ? " 
 
MR WORTH. 197 
 
 "That is my opinion, certainly. I have 
 already said so. We have lost a year, and 
 that can never be recovered. But, from the 
 nature of things, the war will bring about 
 no permanent change in women's wants. The 
 future will be like the past, excepting, of course, 
 that (unless there is a Restoration of some 
 sort) there will be, from the disappearance of 
 a Court, less brilliancy in Paris itself, and less 
 demand here for extreme elegance. So far as 
 I am concerned, however, I expect that foreign 
 orders will make up for what I may lose here. 
 That's all." 
 
 I echoed mournfully, "That's all! Then if 
 we can't get any further in that direction, let 
 me look again, if you will permit me, at the 
 metaphysical aspects of the subject. When 
 women order dresses, are they enthusiastic or 
 indifferent ? Does the process fill them with 
 emotion, as if it were a highly exciting cere- 
 mony ; or do they perform it as if they didn't 
 care ? " 
 
 " That depends. Beginners are almost always 
 stirred up. Clients who come to me for the 
 first time show generally very perceptible flutter. 
 But habit quiets that ; after a time they cease 
 to be fussy, and take things quietly. Your 
 
ig8 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 question means, I suppose judging from what 
 you have said about the moral effects of dress 
 on women whether the ordering of new gowns 
 is a cause of deep palpitation to them. I 
 answer that by saying that they pass through 
 two stages : at first, as a rule, according to 
 my experience, they are distinctly agitated; 
 afterwards they become calm. But always, 
 no matter at what age, the discussion of 
 the composition of a new dress fills every one 
 of them with joy. I will give you some 
 examples." 
 
 Then he began a third series of gossipy tales, 
 which lasted for another half-hour (he certainly 
 had a great liking for personal stories, and a 
 great stock of them, and he told them vividly). 
 But, as before, there was nothing in them that 
 could be made instructive. 
 
 It became evident to me that I had failed. 
 My expectations were not and were not des- 
 tined to be realised. I had met most pleas- 
 ant persons; I had listened to many diverting 
 experiences of a strange sort ; I had had a 
 glimpse into the inside of a life that was new 
 to me ; but I had obtained nothing of what I 
 came to seek. I was very disappointed. I 
 had been treated, however, with such kind- 
 
MR WORTH. 199 
 
 ness, that I felt it would be ungrateful to allow 
 my disappointment to show itself. S6 I chatted 
 on as if I were delighted. 
 
 "What a charming house this is, and what 
 a collection of beautiful things you have in 
 it ! " I exclaimed, trying a new direction of 
 thought. 
 
 " I'm glad you like it," answered Mr Worth. 
 "The ladies who come down here to tea 
 clients, you know are all good enough to say 
 it pleases them. By the way, would you like to 
 hear some stories of my tea-parties ? " 
 
 "Thanks very much," I replied; "I am 
 afraid they would scarcely fit in with what I 
 want to do. Besides, the hours have passed 
 so quickly that we have almost reached the 
 moment when I must go to catch my train. 
 I thank you very warmly for your charming 
 hospitality, and for all that you have told me, 
 though I fear that I shall scarcely be able to 
 build much on it." 
 
 " Well, if you do write anything, you will let 
 me see it. Of course you will not repeat any of 
 the anecdotes I have told you ; they are con- 
 fidential, you know." 
 
 I took leave of them all with renewed thanks, 
 with the sentiment that I had made acquaint- 
 
200 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 ance with excellent people and that I had passed 
 a very interesting evening, and with a strong 
 addition to my many previous reasons for know- 
 ing that the best-planned and best-intentioned 
 efforts often fail. 
 
 I thought a good deal about it all in the 
 train ; I thought a good deal more during the 
 days that followed ; but I did not attempt to 
 write the article, for I had nothing to put 
 into it. 
 
 Shortly afterwards I went away for some 
 months. I never met any of the Worths again. 
 But I have always remembered them, and I 
 remember them still, with hearty sympathy and 
 with sincere gratitude for their most kind re- 
 ception of me. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 GENERAL BOULANGER. 
 
 NOTORIETY needs usually time to grow; it is 
 only in rare cases that it sprouts abruptly. 
 Even General Boulanger, who acquired a pro- 
 digious quantity of it, did not rush upon the 
 world between night and morning. It is true 
 that, when his moment came, he burst out 
 eruptively, but he had to pass previously 
 through a period of preparation : several 
 months elapsed, after he was first heard of 
 in Paris, before he became a personage. In 
 1885 the papers began to mention an un- 
 known general called Boulanger, who held a 
 command at Tunis, and who had made him- 
 self conspicuous there by a noisy quarrel with 
 somebody. No notice was taken, however, 
 of the name, until it was announced, addition- 
 ally, that this same general had so ingratiated 
 
202 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 himself with the Radical party that he was cer- 
 tain to be taken up and pushed on by them. 
 Even then most people continued to be un- 
 aware of his existence. But it ceased to be 
 possible to go on ignoring it, for he was thrust 
 forward so determinedly by the Left who at 
 that time imagined they had found in him a 
 man after their own heart that, at the begin- 
 ning of 1886, M. de Freycinet, chief of the 
 Cabinet of the day, was forced to appoint him 
 Minister of War. 
 
 A " legend " began instantly to form ; 
 rumours, assertions, fables filled the air with 
 strange rapidity; within a week of the nomi- 
 nation everybody professed to know everything 
 about the new - comer ; every mouth was 
 crammed with news ; the town buzzed and 
 blazed with fantastic details. Notoriety deton- 
 ated at last with a deafening roar: its fuse 
 had been burning slowly up for months, but 
 when the explosion came it was tremendous. 
 People stopped each other in the street to add 
 something wonderful to the heap of wild tidings. 
 To quiet French natures (of which there are 
 a good many) the situation became a sudden 
 nuisance ; to the foreign looker-on it brought 
 out, vividly and amusingly, the gobe - mouche 
 
GENERAL BOULANGEK. 203 
 
 tendencies of the large minority. This ac- 
 quaintance whispered to you, witti' profound 
 conviction, "We have got a man at last." 
 That one murmured, with still deeper earnest- 
 ness, " I tell you I know it for a fact, though 
 I cannot mention my authority that he is 
 capable of everything, will do everything, and 
 will succeed in everything." A third, with 
 mystery, intensity, and awfulness, pointed to 
 the sky and muttered, "The day is coming! 
 Revenge and victory!" Others, again, a good 
 many others but they were all, of course, 
 Conservatives declared that this untried 
 general was simply an additional danger; that 
 he was choked with ambition, vanity, and 
 presumption ; and that he would lead his 
 country to destruction. So, on one side, it 
 was asserted that a saviour had arisen for 
 France (I wonder if I could count up the 
 various " saviours " I have heard of there) ; and, 
 on the other, it was alleged, with equal infal- 
 libility, that a fresh and vast peril was loom- 
 ing in the sky. And these two absolutely 
 opposite affirmations were expressed about the 
 same man by a quantity of people, not one of 
 whom knew anything whatever about him, ex- 
 cepting what they read in the papers or heard 
 
204 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 from each other, and not one of whom had 
 ever seen him. 
 
 The question .of getting a sight of *him, of 
 perceiying him; in 'his real person r and s other- 
 wise than by his photograph (which was in 
 every shop- window), was discussed widely, but 
 uselessly. Everybody, in each of the two 
 camps, was excitedly curious to behold him ; 
 but the curiosity remained unsatisfied, for the 
 general hid himself behind the walls of his 
 Ministry. Excepting at the Chamber, where, 
 occasionally, he made red - hot Republican 
 speeches which were cheered delightedly by 
 the Left, he was not to be discovered. He 
 was said to be working so overwhelmingly at 
 the entire reorganisation of the army and the 
 War Office, and at gigantic projects for re- 
 constituting France and Europe, that he had 
 neither time nor patience for mere worldly 
 gatherings. Even in the Bois in the morning 
 he was not amongst the riders. 
 
 Naturally, this invisibility stimulated still 
 further the gaping eagerness of the public, 
 and if it was adopted for the purpose (as 
 very probably it was) it succeeded admirably. 
 The " legend " that had leaped up round the 
 name of Boulanger was swollen daily by re- 
 
GENERAL BOULANGER. 205 
 
 ports (usually in the minutest detail) of what 
 the unperceivable general was doing, of the 
 universal changes he was effecting, and by 
 vague but prodigious hopes aroused by the 
 action that was attributed to him. A French 
 army at Berlin, the Koenigsplatz column of 
 victory transported to Paris and set up as a 
 trophy in front of the Madeleine, were talked 
 of by the most enthusiastic as possibilities 
 of an early future. Imagination rioted. The 
 supposed artificer of all these dreams was 
 sought everywhere and found nowhere ; but 
 the crowd grew more and more convinced 
 that he was nurturing astonishments and 
 hatching history in his laborious seclusion. 
 If, by accident or obligation, he did go any- 
 where, it was solely to official houses ; for, in 
 consequence of the rupture between society 
 and the Republic, functionaries are rarely seen 
 in private drawing - rooms. Now, as official 
 houses mean only those of French Ministers 
 and of foreign diplomatists, it was in the latter 
 alone that people of society (who never set 
 their feet in the former) could hope to satisfy 
 their inquisitiveness about the new man. It 
 was amusing to hear them put earnest questions 
 about the chance of meeting him at this em- 
 
2C)6 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 bassy or that legation, and to observe what 
 a gathering there was at any place where it 
 was imagined he might appear. This excite- 
 ment contributed most fertilisingly to the 
 growth of the earlier constituents of his 
 ephemeral reputation. 
 
 Like the people round me, I became curious 
 too. It was indeed scarcely possible to remain 
 indifferent on a question which, in some shape 
 or degree, was agitating everybody. But though 
 I went about expressly to look for the new 
 general, I never happened to encounter him 
 indoors until he had been for more than three 
 months in office. I had, it is true, perceived 
 him in the Chamber, and had heard him speak 
 there; but that view of him was of no use, 
 for as French Ministers, when sitting in their 
 places in Parliament, turn their backs to the 
 public, and as, when in the Tribune, they are 
 acting a special part, I could not base any 
 opinion on such insufficient evidence. 
 
 At last I received an invitation to meet him 
 at dinner, and commenced on that occasion 
 the slight and superficial personal acquaintance 
 I had with him. When he was announced, 
 a quiet man came in at the door, with eyes 
 that, at a distance, looked mild, without a 
 
GENERAL BOULANGER. 207 
 
 symptom of either the vaunting arrogance 
 which I had heard imputed to him by his 
 enemies, or of the commanding superiority 
 which was attributed to him by his friends. 
 He showed no vulgarity and no forwardness, 
 no energy and no signs of character. His 
 manner, watched from five yards off, seemed 
 gentle and unpretending. He looked so 
 thoroughly nobody that, if I had not known 
 who he was, I should have turned my eyes 
 away from him with indifference. My first 
 impression, at a distance, was that there was 
 absolutely nothing in him. 
 
 Oddly enough, I chanced at table to sit next 
 to a lady who belonged to a family of soldiers, 
 who was thoroughly acquainted with the history 
 of General Boulanger, and who told me more 
 intimate details about him than I had heard 
 before. After describing to me many circum- 
 stances of his career and conduct, she went on 
 to say that he was known in the army as a 
 metteur en scene ; that he could do nothing simply ; 
 that he had always an extraordinary faculty 
 of getting himself remarked and of compelling 
 notice ; that he succeeded in giving an appear- 
 ance of studied effect to his most insignificant 
 proceedings, so much so that it was said of him 
 
208 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 by his comrades, " Oh, that fellow ! he has a 
 way of his own for doing everything : even if he 
 gets wounded in action, he manages it so as to 
 attract attention." This description was not 
 only much more analytical and psychological 
 than anything I had heard before, but it seemed 
 also far more likely to be exactly true. 
 
 In the evening I was introduced to the Gen- 
 eral, had some talk with him, and examined him 
 attentively, with the result that I had to alter 
 my first impression about him. The mouth, 
 which in vainglorious faces is the most tell-tale 
 feature, was concealed by the moustache and 
 beard ; but its divulging action was performed 
 for it by a peculiar and singularly self-conscious 
 movement of the muscles of the upper part of 
 the cheeks, which corresponded, necessarily, to 
 analogous workings of the invisible lips. The 
 eyes, which had seemed to me so placid almost 
 dreamy, indeed at a distant view, were filled 
 to overflowing, when seen close, with a contented 
 but transcendent conceit, which at moments be- 
 came positively glaring. He was evidently not 
 at his ease; the shield of indifference behind 
 which he tried to shelter himself concealed 
 nothing; the need of self-assertion pushed it 
 aside continually, and the real man stood visible. 
 
GENERAL BOULANGER. 
 
 The physiognomy, the ways, the movements, 
 fitted thoroughly to the bad side of his reputa- 
 tion, and I had to recognise that I had judged 
 him too advantageously on his arrival. Seen from 
 far, and seen from near, there were two different 
 persons in him. The eyes, above all, at that 
 moment of his career when, around him, all was 
 clamorous popularity, and when, before him, 
 all was hope, were astonishingly suggestive of 
 aggressive vanity ; and yet, notwithstanding this, 
 the expression, on the whole, was weak indeed 
 its feebleness was as clearly indicated as its 
 conceit. It is true that the two usually go 
 together. 
 
 Still, though I regarded him after dinner far 
 less favourably than before, I could not help 
 making excuses for him. He had jumped with 
 violent abruptness, unprepared by character 
 or by previous contact with the political or 
 social world, to the highest position open to 
 a French soldier ; he had become master of the 
 army, and a figure before Europe ; his situation 
 and his reputed power as a statesman were 
 boiling higher every day; the destinies of his 
 country were supposed to lie in his hands, and 
 a portion of the nation was looking up to him 
 as a heaven-sent leader to the glorious unknown. 
 
 o 
 
210 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 In all this there was enough, and a good deal 
 more than enough, to spur on a vain nature, and 
 to turn a feeble head. He had been taken up 
 as a tool by others, and had committed the not 
 unnatural mistake of imagining that he was 
 capable of working for his own hand. He had 
 extenuating circumstances in his favour, supplied 
 by the folly of many of his own countrymen, 
 whose adulation he was impotent to resist. The 
 mixture in his face of shallowness and self- 
 sufficiency explained the man. From that first 
 meeting with him I had a strong suspicion that 
 his ambition, whatever might be its extent, 
 would be neutralised by the indecision of his 
 character. 
 
 After that dinner I met him from time to time, 
 and had occasional short talks with him. He 
 touched on many subjects, but he did not seem 
 solidly acquainted with any of them, and had 
 no brilliancy of conversation. He inspired me, 
 more and more, with the conviction that his 
 dominating need was to show off, without any 
 accompanying consciousness that he would be 
 found out if he went beyond his depth. I 
 watched him with amusement, but with little 
 real interest, and saw, in almost each of his 
 words and acts, unceasing preoccupation about 
 
GENERAL BOULANGER. 211 
 
 the effect he was producing. He was almost 
 always surrounded, at the evening gatherings 
 where I met him, by a circle of flatterers and 
 starers. He had ample opportunities for satis- 
 fying his longing to be remarked; and I used 
 to wonder what there could be in him to explain 
 his success. The more he struggled to conceal 
 his vanity and to appear indifferent, the more 
 did he show his innate self-assertion; at least, 
 that was the impression which grew stronger in 
 me each time I saw him. He was irritable, too, 
 and especially could not support the semblance 
 of a contradiction : he was convinced, apparently, 
 that it was everybody's duty to agree humbly 
 with so great a personage as he had become. 
 He did try, I think, to behave with a certain 
 bonhomie, but it was not natural. It seemed 
 that a voice was always coming out of him, 
 proclaiming, "I am the future ! " And yet, 
 with all this, he was at moments almost sympa- 
 thetic : he did not possess charm, but he could 
 be what the French call cdlin, and when occa- 
 sionally he took the trouble to be so, he became 
 agreeable. 
 
 He was not liked by women, many of whom 
 professed to be afraid of him and avoided him ; 
 indeed, at that period of his career, I rarely saw 
 
212 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 him talk to women, it was only later that a 
 few of them began to offer him attentions. 
 His main object then appeared to be to influ- 
 ence men, and, on the whole, he succeeded 
 amazingly in doing so. 
 
 One night at the Elysee (where, at the open 
 receptions, almost anybody with a tail-coat could 
 go in), the General was, as usual, in the middle 
 of a gazing group. Suddenly he grew tired of 
 being stared at and commentated, turned sharp 
 round, and walked rapidly into another room. 
 I happened to come up just at the moment, and 
 found myself for an instant next to a middle- 
 aged man, who, from his appearance, was pro- 
 bably a small provincial functionary or trader, 
 brought there by the deputy of his arrondisse- 
 ment to see the show. The man followed 
 Boulanger with his eyes, as he vanished in the 
 crowd, and said aloud, just as I passed by, with 
 the aggrieved air of a sight-seer robbed of his 
 spectacle, " Well, a fellow who runs away like 
 that won't lead others when the time comes." 
 Those words came back to me afterwards when 
 the General had not only failed to lead others, 
 but had run away again himself. 
 
 On another occasion, elsewhere, a friend to 
 whom I was talking said to me, as we looked 
 
GENERAL BOULANGER. 213 
 
 across the room at Boulanger, "We modern 
 French have become a nation of idolaters. It 
 is absurd to go on calling us Christians. We 
 are always eager to worship a new god, pro- 
 vided he shines, and only so long as he shines. 
 When he grows dim we smash him." At that 
 instant some one at my side said "Bon soir" 
 to me. I turned and saw M. de Lesseps. For 
 him, too, I had sad reason to remember, later 
 on, the words, " When our god grows dim we 
 smash him." It was a strange coincidence that 
 he should have appeared that night just as they 
 were spoken. 
 
 So things marched on until the I4th July, 
 the great day of Boulanger's life, so far as 
 popular admiration and exterior manifestations 
 were concerned. It was the date of the review 
 of the army of Paris, held every year by the 
 Minister of War of the moment, on the race- 
 course in the Bois de Boulogne. And it was 
 also the date of the appearance of Boulanger's 
 black horse the horse that became, for the 
 time, a party symbol, a political finger-post, 
 a feature in the history of France. He was 
 a prodigiously showy horse, as gorgeous as he 
 was famous ; he was composed principally of 
 a brandishing tail, a new-moon neck, a look- 
 
214 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 ing-glass skin, and the action of Demosthenes. 
 He seemed to possess two paces only, a fretting 
 walk and a windmill canter. He was a thorough 
 specimen of what the Spaniards call "an ar- 
 rogant horse " : he was gaudy, yet solemn ; 
 strutting, yet stately; flaunting, yet majestic; 
 magniloquent, yet eloquent. He was drilled 
 with the most admirable skill; his manners 
 were so superlative that, with all his firework 
 display, he could not have been either difficult 
 to handle or tiring to sit. Never was a horse 
 so emphatically suited to his rider : the two 
 were identical in their ways ; each was as 
 gilded as the other. As the horse bounded 
 along before the troops, the General (who had 
 a weak grip) rocked on him ; at every stride 
 he swung harmoniously in the saddle, and 
 bent right and left alternately, like a stage 
 sovereign bowing to his assembled people. 
 The entire pageant was wonderfully got up 
 .for its purpose, with the rarest perfection of 
 both preparation and execution. The man, 
 the horse, the ribbons and stars, the white 
 feathers, the plunging and the swinging, were 
 all exactly what they ought to have been to 
 delight and fascinate the mob. The means 
 were so triumphantly appropriated to the end, 
 
GENERAL BOULANGER. 215 
 
 that two hundred thousand spectators screamed 
 themselves sore with rabid enthusiasm. They 
 flamed with frantic raving. That soldier and 
 that horse incarnated so livingly the popular 
 idea of glory, that every soul in the long lines 
 of crowd grew utterly demented. The yelling 
 became, from minute to minute, more and more 
 furiously mad. And the General, feeling that 
 his work was good, rocked, swung, and smiled, 
 then smiled, swung, and rocked, and took his 
 place for the march past. 
 
 Around me, in the tribune where I sat, the 
 feeling was of another nature. I was in a 
 group of widely experienced people, who were 
 all particularly competent to form and express 
 opinions about conduct, to judge of the fitness 
 of means, and to appreciate the value of results ; 
 and their impressions were, almost unani- 
 mously, strongly hostile to the performance we 
 were beholding. Two or three of us argued 
 against the others, that we had before us a 
 pretender, who was appearing for the first time 
 in official splendour before the population he 
 desired to subjugate; that, knowing unmistak- 
 ably how to strike the imagination of that 
 population, he adopted processes consummately 
 adapted to that purpose; that being intimately 
 
2l6 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 aware of the peculiar appetites of the fish he 
 wanted to catch, he threw to it the very fly 
 it longed to swallow ; and that, in consequence 
 of all this, his flashy meretricious acting, though 
 in the most deplorable taste in the eyes of men 
 and women of the world, was entirely in situa- 
 tion towards the mass. We urged that we 
 were looking at a play, which must be measured 
 as a play, and that we were outside real life, 
 the rules of which had no application to the 
 extravaganza represented before us. The ex- 
 hibition in itself was of course mere vulgar 
 ostentation, like a Court procession in the 
 theatre of a fair ; but the political effect which 
 was manifestly produced by it seemed to us to 
 constitute, under the special circumstances of 
 the case, some excuse for the tawdry details 
 of the display. The majority, however, would 
 not listen to us ; the mummery was too offen- 
 sive to them, they could see in it nothing but 
 its bedizened swagger. 
 
 When the last regiment had gone by, another 
 act of the piece commenced. The General 
 turned his horse round, and, alone, came plung- 
 ing and rocking across the few hundred yards 
 of turf which stretched between him and the 
 tribunes. He increased his speed as he got 
 
GENERAL BOULANGER. 217 
 
 near, dashed through the opening in the rails, 
 and pulled up sharp, all foam and feathers, in 
 front of M. Grevy, saluting as he halted. 
 
 This beat the crowd, and broke them ; it was 
 more than they could stand. Wildly they 
 rushed in from everywhere, disregarding sen- 
 tries and policemen, and came tearing towards 
 us, waving hats and handkerchiefs, cheering, 
 shrieking, roaring, as if Boulanger were the 
 one joy of their lives. Howling thousands 
 filled, in half a minute, the whole space in front 
 of the Presidential tribune ; in the midst of 
 them the General rocked softly, and did his 
 best (though very unsuccessfully) to look in- 
 different. As I was in the next tribune, and 
 watched him with a glass, I was able to follow 
 all the movements of his expression : he tried 
 to hide his delight, but it was too much for 
 him, and became distinctly visible. He really 
 might be pardoned for being unable to conceal 
 it, for the moment was full of throbbing triumph 
 for him. People round me called him hard 
 names " buffoon," " circus - rider," " charla- 
 tan," " impostor " but, though the epithets 
 were justified superficially, the personal side 
 of all this swaggering almost disappeared for 
 me, as I have already said, behind the wonder- 
 
2l8 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 ful management of its public effects. It was 
 impossible not to blame the man; it was 
 equally impossible, according to my view, not 
 to recognise that the pretender was doing 
 well. 
 
 The scene lasted for five minutes, and then 
 the President of the Republic who was utterly 
 obliterated, and looked intensely sulky took 
 his place gloomily in his carriage. The General 
 put the black horse at its side, and, under 
 pretext of respectfully escorting M. Grevy, sup- 
 plied the people with an opportunity of yelling, 
 "Vive Boulanger; c'est Boulanger qu'il nous 
 faut ! " from Longchamp to the Elysee. Such 
 frenzied bravos, such outcries of enthusiasm, 
 had not been heard in Paris since the army 
 came back from Italy in 1859. 
 
 As the procession started, some one near me 
 exclaimed bitterly, " And that man is to be the 
 master of France ! " 
 
 About the origin of the black horse I was 
 told five different stories all, I presume, equally 
 false, but of each of which I was assured by 
 the teller that it alone was true. The first was 
 that he was bought out of a circus in Roumania ; 
 the second, that a Paris dealer discovered him 
 at a sale in Yorkshire ; the third, that he was 
 
GENERAL BOULANGER. 219 
 
 the charger of a very big lieutenant of cuiras- 
 siers, and was not up to the weight ; th$ fourth, 
 that he was a cast-off from a racing stable ; 
 the fifth, that he was the pick of the riding- 
 master's horses in the cavalry school at Saumur. 
 In each case it was added that he had been 
 brought to Paris three months before, had been 
 ridden regularly with troops, and had had his 
 paces finished in one of the regimental maneges 
 in Paris, where Boulanger had mounted him 
 daily for the preceding fortnight, to get accus- 
 tomed to him. I repeat these tales to show 
 the curiosity that was felt about the horse : 
 he was regarded for a time as a national insti- 
 tution, and a portion of the community felt 
 proud of him. 
 
 A few days after the review I quitted Paris, 
 and did not see the General again until the 
 winter, when I met him at the German Em- 
 bassy. I thought him changed. He seemed 
 grave ; responsibility and struggle had begun 
 to mark him. But, all the same, the double 
 look of weakness and conceit was in his eyes, 
 as evident as before. When I caught sight of 
 him he was leaning against the piano, Count 
 Miinster towering over him as they chatted to- 
 gether ; a thick ring of gazers was around them. 
 
220 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 The General put on, as usual, unconsciousness 
 under the staring ; but it was evident that he 
 felt it, probably because, on that occasion, the 
 starers were of a class to which he was not quite 
 accustomed : many of them were, of course, of 
 other nationalities. The curiosity about him 
 had become almost more ardent than at first, 
 in consequence of the still growing belief that 
 he had a destiny before him ; but amongst those 
 whose business it was to watch him and to form 
 a reasoned judgment on him, an increasing min- 
 ority was convinced that he was a bag of wind. 
 
 Of the political motives and processes of 
 General Boulanger I say nothing. The gossip 
 of Paris was full of them, and, like others, I 
 heard a good deal true or false about them ; 
 but they, like the circumstances of his private 
 life, lie outside the present subject. At the 
 time it was, of course, impossible to separate 
 the man from his political intentions and acts, 
 for the good reason that he became what he 
 was precisely because of the intentions and 
 acts attributed to him. They enabled him to 
 place himself obtrusively in front of every one 
 else in France, and yet nobody could explain 
 why he got there, otherwise than because he 
 thrust himself forward, and because, for the 
 
GENERAL BOULANGER. 221 
 
 moment, nobody pulled him back. Never did 
 self-assertion produce more abundant" or more 
 immediate effects. Each time I looked at him, 
 during that winter, there came into my head 
 the two famous lines in the ' Biglow Papers ' : 
 
 " I do believe in humbug general-ly, 
 Because I find it is a thing that has a solid vally." 
 
 In his case humbug had indeed a " solid vally." 
 Humbug lifted him so near to personal power, 
 that if he had had the pluck to snatch at it 
 when it seemed ripe to his hand, he would, in 
 all probability, have seized it. Whether he 
 would have held it is a different matter. 
 
 But his humbug, enormous as it was, appeared 
 to me to be unconscious : it guided him, I fancy, 
 in everything ; yet, according to my impression 
 of him, he was unaware of it. Here is an 
 example to explain my meaning. Talking one 
 night of Napoleon, he said : " A great mind, 
 yes ; a great man, no. A soldier, a lawgiver, 
 an administrator, in the very highest meanings 
 of the terms ; but nullified by impetuosity and 
 vanity. No man can be truly great unless he 
 knows when to stop." Thereon he glanced 
 round, as if he expected one of the listeners 
 to answer, "As you would, General." It hap- 
 
222 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 pened, however, that everybody remained silent. 
 So he went on : " Alexander the Great stopped 
 at the Hyphasis, and turned his back on India. 
 It was for that act of prodigious self-control 
 that posterity confirmed his epithet of Great, 
 which it has not accorded to Napoleon. I tell 
 you, gentlemen, real greatness consists in self- 
 restraint." And he looked round again. 
 
 If he, of all men, could express such opinions, 
 it was, I fully believe, because he honestly 
 thought that they applied truthfully to himself. 
 I never suspected him of being a wilful dissem- 
 bler, for I never saw in him a sign of intentional 
 deception. He was too blindly vain to be able 
 to imagine that he needed to employ artifice. 
 He was intensely content to be what he was ; 
 was convinced that he was great ; and did not 
 conceive that he had to prove it. That is what 
 I want to convey in saying that his humbug was 
 unconscious. Others may have judged him 
 otherwise, I am only saying what I thought 
 myself. 
 
 In the spring of 1887 I met him, for the last 
 time, at a gathering at the Spanish Embassy ; 
 and there three or four French ladies grouped 
 themselves round him, sat with him, and talked 
 to him intimately. The rest kept off and dis- 
 
GENERAL BOULANGER. 223 
 
 approved ; but it was a commencement, and the 
 General was palpably pleased by the feminine 
 attentions of which he was beginning to be the 
 object. Flattery in a social form was supposed 
 to be new to him, and to have, for that reason, 
 all the more attraction for him. If only he had 
 lasted long enough, a little Court would, I doubt 
 not, have formed itself around him, in hopes of 
 what he might some day become. 
 
 But neither the flatterers nor the flattered 
 were destined to continue their respective parts, 
 for, in May, the Cabinet was upset, and the 
 General, after sixteen months of office, had to 
 give up the Ministry of War. From that mo- 
 ment his official position in Paris was at an end, 
 he ceased to be invited anywhere, and I had no 
 more opportunities of meeting him, or even of 
 looking at him, excepting at the Chamber and 
 in the street. 
 
 In July 1887 ne was appointed to the com- 
 mand of the I3th Corps, at Clermont. The 
 scene at the Gare de Lyon, on the night of his 
 departure for his post (when, very possibly, he 
 might, if he had dared, have made himself 
 master of France) ; his indiscipline and dis- 
 obedience ; his condemnation to thirty days' 
 arrest in his quarters ; his deprivation of his 
 
224 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 command in 1888 ; his career as a Deputy ; the 
 fierce opposition commenced against him ; his 
 flight ; his exile ; and his miserable death, all 
 lie beyond my bounds. I limit myself to the 
 little I personally saw of him. The rest is 
 public history. 
 
 I add only a story from the ' Figaro,' about 
 the arrest, as an example of the manner in 
 which everything serves to make a mot in France. 
 The railway trains stop at Clermont for five 
 minutes, and passengers are informed of the 
 halt by the usual cry of " Clermont, Clermont ; 
 cinq minutes d'arret ! " The ' Figaro ' pre- 
 tended, while the General was in confinement, 
 that the guards and porters were so affected 
 by his misfortune that, in their emotion, they 
 shouted instinctively and unconsciously, " Cler- 
 mont, Clermont ; trente jours d'arrets ! " 
 
 General Boulanger began explosively, and 
 finished shatteredly : it may indeed be said 
 of him that he was " hoist with his own petard." 
 He knew how to dazzle a mob, but not how to 
 win power. As my neighbour at the dinner 
 when I first met him told me, he was essentially 
 a metteur en scene, but when he had produced 
 the scene his faculties were exhausted. He was 
 aspiring and personally brave ; but, as develop- 
 
GENERAL BOULANGER. 225 
 
 ments of his vanity, he was nervous, bad- 
 tempered, mutinous, seditious, infirm ofrpurpose, 
 and without moral daring. He commenced so 
 brilliantly and ended so deplorably that, out 
 of pity for his fall, much may be forgiven him. 
 I have the liveliest recollection of his faults 
 (especially of those which I saw him commit) ; 
 but I cannot help regretting his fate. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE OPERA. 
 
 THERE are subjects which seem, by their in- 
 herent nature, to be necessarily full of incidents ; 
 from which everybody, as a matter of course, 
 expects impressions ; but which are so funda- 
 mentally deceptive that, when they are looked 
 at closely, scarcely anything can be discovered 
 in them. It would be going too far to pretend 
 that their water turns into sand and their 
 flowers into ashes, but it is certainly true of 
 them that they promise in theory enormously 
 more than they fulfil in practice, and that 
 they dazzle on their surface and deceive in 
 their substance. The Opera is according to 
 my experience at least one of the most de- 
 lusive of this class of subjects: it holds out 
 all sorts of tempting expectations, and realises 
 scarcely any of them. Though my recollections 
 
THE OPERA. 227 
 
 of the Paris Opera extend over nearly half a 
 century, they form, in the main, tfnly a con- 
 fused heap, with splashes of colour here and 
 there, but without much outline ; it is with 
 difficulty that I can detect amongst them an 
 occasional clearly marked picture. Until I 
 began to look into them with the purpose of 
 describing them, I always took it for granted 
 that they contained a quantity of strange 
 details and amusing memories, and yet, on 
 careful examination, I find them compara- 
 tively empty of any well - defined sensations. 
 Such few details in them as may be worth 
 narrating are all small. The retrospect dis- 
 appoints me. The reason is, evidently, that, 
 like others, I have gone habitually to the 
 Opera as a mere social act, just as I should 
 go into a drawing-room, and have sought for 
 my diversion there in the boxes rather than 
 in the performance. To the people who con- 
 stitute society (or who think they do) the 
 Opera has always meant, and still means, the 
 house rather than the stage. To see and to 
 discuss acquaintances, and to be seen and 
 discussed by them, and (for men) to go gossip- 
 ing from box to box, are everywhere the main 
 objects with which "the world" goes to the 
 
228 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 Opera. In southern Europe, indeed, it may 
 be said that they are the sole objects. There 
 are, of course, a quantity of people, less 
 regular in their attendance, whose purpose 
 is simply to hear the music ; but they are not 
 "the world." They do not talk, as others do. 
 In Paris, especially, it is an accepted principle 
 that society n'ecoute que le ballet. It is only 
 when the curtain rises on the short skirts 
 that tongues grow still and that eyes turn 
 unanimously to the stage. There are, naturally, 
 singers to whom everybody listens, and songs 
 (even if heard for the hundredth time) for which 
 all conversations are interrupted ; but the gen- 
 eral rule remains, that relative silence and at- 
 tention are reserved, in Paris, for the dancing. 
 Of a spectacle so constituted there is much of 
 personal tittle-tattle to narrate, but there is 
 very little of general interest ; and that is, I 
 apprehend, the reason why people who have fre- 
 quented the Opera during nearly all their lives 
 find, as I have just said, so little to tell about it. 
 This condition of the question is reflected 
 in the copious literature which exists about the 
 Paris Opera, for it does not give a quarter of 
 its pages to the music, and concerns itself prin- 
 cipally with the ballet. There are quantities 
 
THE OPERA. 22Q 
 
 of volumes, dating from various years of the 
 century, filled largely with biographies and 
 adventures of danseuses, their variegated loves, 
 their vanities, and their bitter jealousies of each 
 other are described minutely; but there are 
 scarcely any ordinary books (I exclude, of 
 course, the special and technical ones) which 
 treat mainly of the music performed, and not 
 one, so far as I know, which describes the 
 public and its ways. 
 
 And yet the chronicles of the boxes are pre- 
 cisely what society cares most about, because 
 they mean the history of a not inconsiderable 
 portion of the brighter social life of Paris. As 
 those chronicles, if they existed, would of course 
 be purely local, foreign readers would not care 
 for them ; but to Paris itself they would signify 
 "the Opera," almost to the exclusion of all else. 
 When it is remembered that there are three 
 subscribers' nights each week ; that very few of 
 the abonnes possess a box for more than one of 
 the three nights (sometimes, even, for only one 
 night in a fortnight) ; that there are in the present 
 house about eighty boxes open to subscription, 
 on the ground tier, grand tier, and second tier 
 (the side-boxes on the second tier are left for 
 the miscellaneous public, who also have all the 
 
230 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 boxes at their disposal on the off -nights), it 
 will be perceived that the number of different 
 subscribers is considerable, and that the intimate 
 history of each box is very varied and altogether 
 special to itself. The controllers on the stair- 
 case must need some training before they get 
 to know the face of every one, as undoubtedly 
 they do. No subscriber's box is ever let ; it is 
 lent to friends when not used by its owner : in 
 the event of mourning or long absence it may 
 be leased away for an entire year ; but it would 
 be against the usages of Paris to retail it for 
 money for a single night. The difficulty of ob- 
 taining an abonnement is very great, for a box 
 once got is held solidly in a family. When the 
 old Marquis de Casa Riera, who had for many 
 years the great Entre Colonnes box on the 
 right side (for which he paid, if I remember 
 rightly, 1200 a-year, and which, though he 
 was blind, he rilled every night with pretty 
 women), died some fifteen years ago, there 
 was a hot flutter of excitement in the Paris of 
 the Opera as to what would become of the 
 succession to the box. After a palpitating 
 struggle of influences, efforts, and diplomacy, 
 equal in emotion to the contest between Ulysses 
 and the Telamonian Ajax for the armour of 
 
THE OPERA. 231 
 
 Achilles, the nephew and heir of the old Mar- 
 quis managed to keep the box for bne night 
 a- week (he could not obtain more), and it was 
 won for each of the other nights by persons of 
 the highest place, who had been longing for 
 it impatiently for years. An ordinary box for 
 one night a - week costs from 240 to 320 
 a-year, according to its size and situation. The 
 combat for boxes is unceasing : it is one of the 
 features of the rich life of Paris, and, to those 
 who know the people and the circumstances, 
 the combat is diverting to watch. Nothing, 
 however, need be told about it here. I presume 
 that it has gone on from the beginning, in every 
 one of the thirteen houses in which the Paris 
 Opera has successively been lodged ; but it is 
 naturally more acute at present than it ever was 
 before, for the two reasons that more and more 
 people are able to pay for a box, and that 
 the present theatre is so superb that it acts 
 temptingly and stimulatingly on the ambitious. 
 Amongst its other glories it is by very far the 
 biggest that exists ; for instance, it is about 
 three times the size (in surface and in cube) of 
 the Operas of Munich and St Petersburg, and 
 about ten times greater than that at Berlin. 
 The influence of the Paris Opera on the 
 
232 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 history and development of operatic representa- 
 tions has been considerable ; no other city has 
 contributed in the same degree to the founda- 
 tion and the progress of both opera and ballet. 
 In Opera Comique particularly, as distinguished 
 from the Italian Opera Buffa, the French have 
 taken the lead from the commencement ; it is 
 to them, almost alone, that we owe the growth 
 of this branch of composition, the representation 
 of which, however, has been transferred from 
 the Grand Opera to smaller houses. Of course 
 the first operas were, as the name shows, Italian, 
 and the earliest of them are said to belong to the 
 end of the fifteenth century. But the establish- 
 ment of what is now understood by a national 
 Opera was a purely French act, and dates from 
 1671, when " Pomone," a " Comedie fran^aise en 
 niusique," was performed, under the management 
 of the Abbe Perrier, in a house built for the 
 purpose, in what is now the Rue Mazarine. 
 In 1672 Lulli was appointed by Louis XIV., 
 through the protection of Madame de Monte- 
 span, Director of the Opera, and the title of 
 " Academic royale de Musique " was bestowed 
 on the undertaking. From that time to this 
 there has been a French Opera in Paris. 
 
THE OPERA. 233 
 
 But though the French Opera has always 
 been a national institution, and though all its 
 productions have been in the French language 
 (excepting when, once or twice, an Italian troupe 
 has given momentary representations), its des- 
 tinies have been largely shaped by foreigners. 
 From Lulli to Gluck and Piccini, and from them 
 again to Rossini and Meyerbeer, foreign com- 
 posers have contributed as much as Frenchmen 
 to its success. Futhermore, it must be re- 
 marked, as a characteristic of its history, that 
 almost every one of the early pieces, whether 
 by French or foreign composers, contained a 
 ballet ; indeed, on looking over the long list 
 of Tragedies lyriques and Pastorales represented 
 during the first hundred years, scarcely any 
 example can be found of song without dance. 
 And the dancing was an important portion of 
 the whole show, not a mere divertissement as in 
 our day. This feature was as clearly marked 
 from the origin as was the cosmopolitan com- 
 position of the music. In the first letters- 
 patent which Louis XIV. addressed to the 
 management of the Opera, he used words which 
 painted clearly the state of the opinion which 
 then existed as to the importance of dancing. 
 
234 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 He said : 
 
 Bien que 1'art de la danse ait toujours et reconnu 
 Tun des plus honnetes et des plus necessaires a former 
 le corps, neanmoins il s'est, pendant les desordres et 
 la confusion des dernieres guerres, introduit dans le 
 dit art, comme en tous autres, un grand nombre 
 d'abus capables de les porter a leur ruine irreparable. 
 . . . Beaucoup d'ignorants ont tache' de le defigurer 
 et de le corrompre en la personne de la plus grande 
 partie des gens de qualite. . . . Ce qui fait que nous 
 en voyons peu, dans notre cour et suite, capables 
 et en etat d'entrer dans nos ballets, quelque dessein 
 que nous eussions de les y appeler. A quoi etant 
 necessaire de pourvoir, et desirant retablir le dit art 
 dans sa perfection et 1'augmenter autant que faire se 
 pourra, nous avons juge a propos d'etablir dans notre 
 bonne ville de Paris une Academic royale de danse, 
 composee de treize des plus experimentes du dit art. 
 
 So that the Opera dancing-school was regarded 
 in the royal mind as an aid for the development 
 of Court dancing. And yet, notwithstanding 
 this enthusiasm for " le dit art," it was not 
 until 1681, after the princesses and ladies of 
 the Court had set at St Germain the example 
 of dancing and declaiming before the King 
 in the ballet " Le Triomphe de 1' Amour," that 
 women dancers ventured to show themselves 
 on the public stage. Until then the female 
 
THE OPERA. 235 
 
 parts in the ballets had been performed by men. 
 Emboldened, and indeed authorised, by the 
 initiative from above, Mademoiselle La Fon- 
 taine had the courage to appear as a danseuse 
 at the Opera ; she was the first woman-dancer, 
 the originator and creator of the profession ; 
 and as she had the good fortune to commence 
 her career just at the right moment, she had 
 immense success and made her name immortal. 
 Whereon, it may be observed that immortality 
 amongst mortals is obtainable sometimes from 
 curious sources. 
 
 At that time dancing was regarded as such 
 a noble act that not only did the bearers of 
 the royal and historic names of France perform 
 before the sovereign, and not only did the King 
 himself take part sometimes in person, but, 
 additionally, a young Prince Dietrichstein, the 
 eldest son of the then Grand Master of the 
 Imperial Court at Vienna, positively danced a 
 pas seul in public on the stage of the Paris Opera 
 on igth June 1682, in the lyric tragedy of 
 " Persee." The ' Mercure Galant ' (the famous 
 monthly journal of the time) described the scene 
 in detail, saying, amongst other things, " Ce 
 jeune seigneur, qui n'a pris Ie9on que depuis un 
 an, dansa cette entree d'une maniere si juste 
 
236 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 qu'il fut admire de tout le monde." Yet, not- 
 withstanding the success of the attempt, a 
 hundred and fifty years passed before persons 
 of society appeared again as dancers on the 
 Opera stage. In 1833, when Auber's opera of 
 " Gustave III." was produced, the ball scene, 
 with its splendours and its mad galop, produced 
 such an effect on the audience that, as a con- 
 temporary writer puts it 
 
 II y eut entre la scene et la salle un fluide de com- 
 munication et d'attraction tellement imperieux que la 
 scene se peupla au prejudice de la salle. Des dames 
 de grandes dames affublees de dominos epais, 
 le visage couvert d'un masque impenetrable, vinrent 
 galoper au milieu des danseuses et des figurantes 
 du corps de ballet. Les homines suivirent 1'example 
 des femmes ; ils passerent sur le theatre ; et, un cer- 
 tain jour du carnaval, les lions des avant-scenes et de 
 1'orchestre, deguises en ours blancs et noirs, conduisir- 
 ent le galop a la grande joie d'une salle comble. 
 
 To give another example, of a different sort, 
 of the importance acquired formerly by the 
 ballet, I mention the fact that when the first 
 Vestris, founder of the dynasty and father of 
 " le Dieu de la danse," declared, with profound 
 conviction, " there are only three great men 
 in the world, myself, Voltaire, and the King 
 
THE OPERA. 237 
 
 of Prussia," nobody seems to have felt surprise 
 or to have offered contradiction. 
 
 The portraits of twenty of the most famous 
 dansemes are to be seen in the foyer de la dame 
 of the present Opera House, where, from Made- 
 moiselle La Fontaine down to Madame Rosati, 
 including Salle, Camargo, Guimard, Noblet, 
 Taglioni, Duvernay, Elssler, Carlotta Grisi, 
 and Cerrito, a fairly complete gallery of faces 
 and costumes, reproduced from old pictures, 
 is on the walls. It is a curious collection 
 of the types and fashions of the two last 
 centuries. 
 
 The foyer de la danse was in other days a very 
 famous gathering-place. Regular subscribers 
 and distinguished personages alone had the 
 right to enter it, and for a long while the right 
 was regarded as a privilege. But since the 
 new house has been opened the privilege has 
 lost much of its ancient value. The foyer of 
 the former building in the Rue Le Pelletier was 
 old-fashioned, badly lighted, with faded velvet 
 benches, and with damaged frames to the mir- 
 rors; its sole ornament was a marble bust of 
 Guimard. And yet all Paris and all Europe (I 
 need scarcely explain that I am speaking of men 
 only) flocked to it as a place of delight. It was 
 
238 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. __ 
 
 full of traditions and associations ; the history 
 of recent dance was represented in it ; every 
 danseuse of name since 1821 (when the house 
 was built, after the murder of the Due de Berri 
 in the preceding establishment in the Place 
 Louvois) had received in it the homage of 
 her admirers ; with all its shabbiness it shone, 
 with all its dinginess it glittered ; it offered 
 to its habitues what they considered to be a 
 delightful pastime, and constituted a drawing- 
 room of an intensely specialised sort. The 
 foyer of the new house is a vast gorgeous hall, 
 all marble columns, brilliant lustres, endless 
 looking-glasses, pictures, and bright ornaments : 
 it is as magnificent as the old one was squalid ; 
 and yet it lacks the meaning and the attraction 
 of the other, and is comparatively abandoned. 
 The fashion has changed ; foreign princes have 
 ceased to think that their first visit to Paris has 
 been incomplete if they have not seen it, and 
 have not listened to the oracles of the priestesses 
 of the shrine. There is still a crowd in it (as 
 thick, perhaps, as ever) during the entr'actes of 
 the ballet ; but the composition of the assem- 
 blage is altered : it is no longer made up prin- 
 cipally of ambassadors, ministers, and bearers of 
 great names ; journalists and Bourse speculators 
 
THE OPERA. 239 
 
 are abundant in it now. The young ladies, who 
 
 4* 
 have acquired from long practice the faculty of 
 
 standing about unconcernedly and imperviously 
 
 in draughts, with bare legs, arms, and shoulders, 
 
 and with " des robes qui ne commencent qu'a 
 
 peine et finissent tout de suite " (another 
 
 definition is, " des robes excessivement hautes 
 
 par le bas et excessivement basses par le haut "), 
 
 do not charm the gentlemen of to-day as they 
 
 fascinated their fathers. The foyer lives upon 
 
 its ancient fame, and is still curious to look at ; 
 
 but it has fallen from the high place which once 
 
 belonged to it in the life of Paris. When I first 
 
 saw it, the gathering was in its full glory. 
 
 Almost miserable as was the room, with its 
 
 dirty sloping floor (corresponding with the 
 
 incline of the stage), its low ceiling, and its air 
 
 of general discomfort, the scenes that went on 
 
 in it, the words that were spoken in it, and the 
 
 people that frequented it, were absolutely apart ; 
 
 nothing like them was to be found elsewhere. 
 
 The mixture of brilliancy, of elegance, of dance, 
 
 of sparkling talk (on the side of the men), of 
 
 love-making and of laughter, was prodigious. 
 
 Neither natural nor experimental chemistry has 
 
 ever produced a more intimate compound of 
 
 fantastic elements : it was social and moral 
 
240 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 synthesis in its intensest form. At that time the 
 habitues of the foyer were convinced that they 
 could not live without it ; it had become nec- 
 essary to their lives. The present generation 
 manages to subsist away from it. 
 
 Scarcely any of the stories told of danseuses 
 are amusing; few of the heroines have left 
 behind them any reputation of esprit. The best 
 known of the legends is that Mademoiselle 
 Guimard determined, when she was young, that 
 she would postpone growing old ; so she had 
 her portrait taken at the age of twenty, placed 
 the picture on her dressing-table by the side 
 of her glass, and painted herself up to it every 
 morning until she was fifty. By that means 
 she remained twenty during thirty years. It 
 was she too, who, at sixty, consented to give 
 a final representation for her friends, on con- 
 dition that the curtain should be kept down 
 to the level of her waist, and that the spectators 
 should see nothing of her but her legs, which, 
 although her body was so thin that she was 
 called "the skeleton of grace," had retained in 
 age the beauty of their youthful form. 
 
 Of all the others there is not a story to be 
 told, not one at least that is worth telling; 
 the quartz contains no gold. But yet there is 
 
THE OPERA. 241 
 
 something to be said of one of them. There 
 was a dancer of whom it is impossible not to 
 speak, not indeed to tell stories of her, for I 
 know none, but to give her the first place 
 which belongs to her in dance history Tag- 
 lioni ! Nature did not, most certainly, intend 
 that she should dance (although she belonged 
 to a family of dancers), for, as a child, she was 
 a most wretched object, pale, crooked, wasted ; 
 but will and work made of her a wonder. Her 
 debut was at Vienna ; her success, however, was 
 won in Paris, and Paris claims her as its own. 
 She appeared there in 1827, but it was not till 
 1830 that, in " Le Dieu et la Bayadere," she 
 took her real place. In 1832 came " La Syl- 
 phide," a still greater triumph, in which even 
 the physical defects of Taglioni, especially her 
 phenomenal thinness, seemed almost to add to 
 the effect she produced : 
 
 Elle devenait une ombre; elle se condensait en 
 vapeur ; elle flottait sur le lac bleuatre et sous 1 ecume 
 de la cascade, comme un flocon de brume souleve par 
 le vent ! Une couronne de volubilis ideal s'enroulait 
 dans ses cheveux, et derriere ses epaules freles pal- 
 pitaient deux petites ailes de plumes de paon. Sa 
 robe semblait taillee dans le crepe des libellules, et 
 son soulier dans le corolle d'un lis. Elle apparaissait 
 et s'evanouissait comme une vision impalpable. 
 
 Q 
 
242 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 She made diaphanousness the fashion ; " toutes 
 les femmes essayerent de se vaporiser, a 1'aide 
 de jupes de tulle, de mousseline, et de tarlatane ; 
 le blanc fut presque la seule couleur adoptee." 
 The dance of Taglioni was a revelation of new 
 possibilities : it did not look human ; she floated ; 
 when she soared into the air there seemed to 
 be no reason why she should come down again ; 
 her bounds were the flights of a bird. She has 
 had no successor; stage -dancing has become 
 acrobatic; it is no longer the dream of grace 
 which she had made of it. As she ceased in 
 1837 t dance in Paris (in consequence, I think, 
 of some dispute with the management), it was 
 in London that I saw her. She was not only 
 extraordinary, but incredible ; there was no 
 believing that such aerial movements could be 
 performed by a woman. 
 
 I leave the ballet where I found it, in the foyer 
 de la dame, its now half-abandoned home. My 
 object in referring once more to that foyer is to 
 observe that, while everybody went to it, nobody 
 but musicians ever looked, or do look, into the 
 foyer du chant. Singers, unlike dancers, fear cold 
 air, and stay in their dressing-rooms until the last 
 moment ; if they appear at all in their foyer, they 
 are so wrapped up that they are in no way smart. 
 
THE OPERA. 243 
 
 I have but two or three disjointed details to 
 tell of them, for the stones about ^singers are 
 even rarer than those about dancers : they have 
 fewer loves, but even more jealousies, and, on 
 the whole, are very uninteresting personally. 
 
 The first female singer at the Paris opera 
 was Mademoiselle de Castilly, who appeared in 
 " Pomone." As she was of noble birth, she 
 obtained from Louis XIV. an edict declaring 
 that " tous les gentilshommes et damoiselles 
 puissent chanter aux dites pieces et represen- 
 tations de notre Academic royale, sans que 
 pour ce ils soient censes deroger au dit titre 
 de noblesse, ou a leurs privileges, droits, et 
 immunity's." 
 
 After her came a series of names which have 
 grown, more or less, into the history of music. 
 The famous Sophie Arnoult was not only a 
 great singer, but also the most brilliant wit of 
 her time; most of the bons mots of the eigh- 
 teenth century were attributed to her. It was 
 she who created the role of Eurydice in Gluck's 
 " Orphee " on its first performance in 1774. 
 
 Mademoiselle Falcon, who appeared in 1832, 
 had an immense success : never had a more 
 magnificent singer been heard; but, after eight 
 years of triumphs, her voice failed suddenly one 
 
244 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 night in the middle of a performance. It was 
 gone ! 
 
 The subjects of all the earlier operas repre- 
 sented in Paris were drawn, according to the 
 usage of the period, from mythology, the ' Iliad,' 
 or Greek history. " Jephte," in 1731, was the 
 first piece taken from the Bible. The Arch- 
 bishop protested against it, and got the repre- 
 sentation stopped. But the interdict was soon 
 removed, and from that moment all sources 
 were open to the libretto-maker. 
 
 The first role written for a contralto voice 
 was in Campra's opera of " Tancrede," brought 
 out in 1702. The object was to utilise the 
 superb lower notes of Mademoiselle Maupin. 
 
 After these slight indications of scattered 
 points in the records of the Paris Opera, I go 
 on now to such few of my own recollections 
 as have remained clear. The mass of them 
 represent, as I have already said, a kaleido- 
 scopic mist. I see a great confusion of mixed 
 colours and faint sparklings and almost shape- 
 less forms ; I am vaguely conscious of much 
 chatter and much laughter; I dimly hear the 
 shouts or the warblings of song, and the crash- 
 ing or the whispering of music; I hazily per- 
 
THE OPERA. 245 
 
 ceive lights, diamonds, smiles, shoulders, legs, 
 costumes, trees, mountains, lakes, processions, 
 battles, a variety of crimes, wild loves and 
 equally wild hates, and all the rest that helps 
 to make up a lyric tragedy or a ballet. That, 
 in the main, is what remains to me of long 
 years of Opera ; but as nobody else (nobody 
 at least that I have known) can honestly pre- 
 tend that he preserves much more, and as no 
 other sorts of what is called amusement have 
 left behind them any plainer traces for me, I 
 do not feel justified in addressing any special 
 reproach to the Opera, because my memories 
 of it are so nearly blank. On the contrary, 
 I feel very grateful to it for the little I do 
 remember. 
 
 In Gounod's "Tribut de Zamora " (which, I 
 fancy, is not known in England) Madame Krauss 
 filled the role of a Spanish woman, a native of 
 Zamora, who had been taken prisoner twenty 
 years before by the Moors, her husband being 
 killed fighting and her baby lost, and who had 
 gone mad from the shock. She appears in the 
 piece at forty years of age, after spending half 
 her life amongst her enemies, treated by them 
 with respect precisely because she has lost her 
 reason. At the moment when she comes on, 
 
246 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 the Spanish girls who are sent each year as 
 tribute, under a disgraceful treaty with the 
 Moors, are brought in from Zamora. One of 
 them is kind to the crazy woman, tries to 
 soothe her, and, sadly, talks to her of Zamora. 
 " Zamora ? " repeats the other, wistfully, al- 
 most tenderly, as if listening to a far-off echo, 
 " Zamora ? " The girl, surprised, asks, " Do 
 you know Zamora ? " The dull meaningless 
 answer is again, " Zamora ! " Then the girl 
 tells her own story, speaks of her father killed 
 on the ramparts by the Moors, of her mother 
 carried off by them just after she herself was 
 born, of the kind friends who brought her up ; 
 and the other listens vacantly, reiterating gently 
 "Zamora!" Suddenly, with a start, the mad 
 woman snatches at the girl, drags her hurriedly 
 to the footlights, stares at her insanely, touches 
 her, pulls her, muttering again and again 
 "Zamora!" struggling, at first feebly; then, by 
 degrees, excitedly ; at last, with frantic passion, 
 making terrific efforts to form thought. Her 
 lips part ; a hoarse cry comes from them, but 
 it tells nothing ; her kindled eyes grow dull 
 again. The girl gazes at her terror - struck ; 
 others gather round the maniac and watch her 
 with awe. She falls upon her knees, pulling 
 
THE OPERA. 247 
 
 the girl down to her with the left hand, pointing 
 the other hand out before her into "space with 
 an awfulness of idiotic eagerness I have never 
 seen attained by any other actress. Again the 
 moaning cry comes from her, terribly appealing, 
 "Zamora!" With a wild leap she springs 
 to her feet, hurls back her tangled hair, flings 
 up her distorted eyes, and from her lips burst 
 out three hysterical notes, sounding like the 
 opening of a chant. With a strain so fearful 
 that it is positively painful to watch, she 
 crouches down again, glares vacantly before 
 her, and then pours out more notes this time 
 with half-spoken words ! Memory is awak- 
 ing ! Savagely the stress goes on ; its fury 
 seems to crush her. Again she falls upon 
 her knees, upon her hands even ; she bends 
 down to the ground ; lifts herself half up and 
 casts her arms about imploringly, as if suppli- 
 cating for consciousness. A glimmer shows 
 itself weakly in her eyes ; it gains ; light is in 
 them ; it shines ; it flashes ; it blazes. Wildly, 
 like a panther from its lair, she springs to her 
 feet again, desperately she throws her ravelled 
 hair behind her, tears off her hood, bares the 
 head that once more begins to hold a mind, 
 and, hesitating, broken, breathless, clutching 
 
248 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 with her fingers at the air as if to seize sup- 
 port from it, pronounces, in a fearful whisper, 
 "Debout, enfants de 1'Iberie ! " And then 
 she goes on muttering " Debout . . . debout ! " 
 She stops again, incapable, unknowing. But 
 she has said enough ; she has begun the hymn 
 of Zamora ! The terrified girl at her side 
 has heard and recognised the words; she 
 seizes gaspingly the mad woman, holds her, 
 calls to her, implores her. The other struggles 
 on. Clearer, plainer, louder, come out the 
 words, " Debout, enfants de 1'Iberie ! " Again 
 and again she tries, but she knows not more. 
 At last, after overpowering effort, with all-con- 
 quering passion, strained to her fullest height, 
 her head uplifted, her arms stretched out as if 
 to grasp the sky, her eyes a flame of radiance, 
 a flood of bewildered joy, of returned reason, 
 pouring over her, rushing out of her in every 
 gesture, she shouts out, in thundering notes, 
 the whole fierce chant 
 
 " Debout, enfants de PIbe'rie ! Haut les glaives et haut 
 
 les cceurs ! 
 Des pa'iens nous serons vainqueurs, ou nous mourrons 
 
 pour la patrie ! " 
 
 Then, turning burningly to the girl, she cries, 
 " And you ? " It is her daughter ! 
 
THE OPERA. 249 
 
 It has never been given to me to behold on 
 the stage such a scene as that. Even if I had 
 seen nothing else to recollect, it would have 
 been worth while to go vacantly to the Opera 
 for fifty years in order to wait for that. The 
 first time I was present at it I happened to be 
 in a stage-box, with Madame Krauss ten feet 
 from me. My throat dried, my back grew 
 cold, my heart seemed to stop beating. The 
 effect was almost awful in its intensity. I had 
 always regarded Madame Krauss as a pro- 
 digiously powerful dramatic artist, but in that 
 scene she surpassed all I had conceived pos- 
 sible. I need scarcely say that I never talked 
 while that scene was on. The rest of the opera 
 was flat, but those minutes were tremendous; 
 they do indeed stand out in my memories of the 
 Opera. 
 
 Another recollection of a very different nature 
 is, for other reasons, almost as fresh in my head. 
 Soon after the present house was opened (I for- 
 get the year) Johann Strauss came to Paris with 
 his band, and gave a concert in the staircase of 
 the Opera, which was then still in the glory of 
 its novelty. The concert was for the benefit 
 of the Austro - Hungarian Charity Society of 
 France, and was under the patronage, and in- 
 
250 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 deed under the management, of the Austrian 
 Embassy. All Paris went to it, ex-kings, ex- 
 princes, and all sorts of other people. The 
 house itself was not opened ; the visitors were 
 admitted only to the staircase and its sur- 
 roundings that is to say, to the great land- 
 ings on each floor, to the public foyer and 
 avant- foyer, and to the colonnades, arcades, 
 and corridors around. This does not seem 
 much in words, but in fact it means an enor- 
 mous space. And for architectural and orna- 
 mental effect nothing more splendid is to be 
 found in Europe ; such a grouping of marbles, 
 columns, sculptures, colours, metals, and varied 
 decorations exists nowhere else. The orchestra 
 was placed in the colonnade between the open 
 side of the back of the staircase and the 
 foyer. Chairs were against the walls wherever 
 it was possible to put them. The balconies 
 were reserved for the diplomatic body and 
 great personages. The public walked about or 
 sat, and met friends and chatted. A brilliant 
 show it was, and the music was most effective. 
 From the " Blauen Donau " to the " Kunstler- 
 Leben," Strauss played almost every one of 
 his compositions, and played them with that 
 quivering swing, that half - dreamy, half -fiery 
 
THE OPERA. 251 
 
 throe, and, above all, with that flickering, 
 caressing hesitation on certain notes, which 
 are all so markedly distinctive of the Vienna 
 manner of performing waltz music. The 
 audience was fairly carried away. The suc- 
 cess was enormous. Everybody congratu- 
 lated Count Kuefstein, the First Secretary 
 of the Austrian Embassy, on having con- 
 ceived so luminous an idea. A concert in a 
 staircase ! But admirable as was the effect, 
 there was a flaw in it. When everybody had 
 arrived (and everybody came early), the stair- 
 case itself, which was the centre of everything, 
 as the arena is the centre of a bull - ring, 
 remained absolutely empty. The landings on 
 the first floor were crammed with ball dresses 
 and black coats, but in the middle was a vast 
 hole, white, lustrous, void, engulfing. Not one 
 soul passed up or down or stood upon those 
 blanched marble steps. The chasm grew 
 more and more yawning, cold, and painful, 
 because everybody sat or stood or strolled 
 around it and gazed into it. People seemed 
 to become almost oppressed by it. I, in par- 
 ticular, looked at it with awe, for I was 
 obliged to go away; I had to be elsewhere 
 at eleven. Now going away meant going 
 
252 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 down that staircase; it meant leaping, like 
 Curtius, into that chasm ; it meant the de- 
 scent of that endless series of white polished 
 slabs (which I had till then admired, but 
 which at that moment I hated) by a man 
 alone in black, with all Paris looking at him. 
 I advanced fearfully to the crest of one of the 
 wide flights and cast my eyes into its depths. 
 It appalled me ! I shrank from the awful 
 plunge. It was like forming a storming- 
 party all alone. I wandered away again, 
 and sought in the crowd for some one who 
 looked as if he wanted to go, so that I might 
 follow him. I felt capable of any sort of 
 meanness in order to obtain a leader, or, at 
 all events, a companion. Not one ! Every- 
 body stopped stolidly and solidly, and evidently 
 everybody meant to stop until the end. It 
 was already past eleven ! At last, with an 
 effort of will and a sentiment of duty, to 
 which I have looked back ever since with 
 admiration, I walked straight to the top step, 
 clenched my teeth (I wanted to shut my eyes 
 too, but I needed them open), and, alone, 
 began the descent. With a determination to 
 appear indifferent, which was never surpassed 
 by the boldest criminal on his way to execu- 
 
THE OPERA. 253 
 
 tion, I positively sauntered down ! Notwith- 
 standing my emotion, I did not hurry. I had 
 the consciousness that, to the assembled eyes 
 above, I must have looked like a fly crawling 
 across a ceiling; but I persisted. In safety 
 I reached the bottom, disappeared into the 
 entrance-hall, and breathed. I knew that Paris 
 loved to scoff, and I expected to be known 
 thenceforth as " the staircase man " ; but, to 
 my intense relief, I found next day that not a 
 soul had noticed me, and that all my terror 
 had been wasted. All the same, I had rather 
 not do it again. 
 
 Another recollection that has remained very 
 clear to me is of something that happened out- 
 side the old house. One night, in January 
 1858, I had dined in the Champs Elysees, had 
 lingered there, and had not started for the 
 Opera till nearly half-past ten. When the cab 
 that carried me reached the bottom of the 
 Chaussee d'Antin, it began to go slowly, and 
 finally pulled up. I found myself in a crowd. 
 I put my head out and asked the nearest man 
 what was the matter. He answered excitedly, 
 " They have tried to assassinate the Emperor ; 
 the Boulevard is barred ; you cannot go on." 
 Then up came a policeman shrieking out the 
 
254 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 order to turn back and clear the way. I ques- 
 tioned him, but of course obtained no reply 
 whatever. So I left the cab and went on to 
 the pavement, in the double hope of hearing 
 details and of reaching the Opera on foot. 
 
 As everybody was bursting with the news, 
 I was told in half a minute by half-a-dozen 
 eager strangers that an infernal machine had 
 exploded an hour before in the Rue Le Pelle- 
 tier at the moment when the Emperor and 
 Empress had reached the entrance to the 
 Opera, and that, though neither of them was 
 hurt, their carriage had been half smashed, 
 and numbers of other people had been killed 
 or wounded. I learnt too that every street 
 was closed, that no one was allowed to approach 
 the scene, and that it was idle to dream of 
 getting any farther. The emotion of the mob 
 was immense ; horror of the crime and attach- 
 ment to the Imperial dynasty were loudly pro- 
 fessed. I daresay, however, that the suspicion 
 of the presence of detectives listening for 
 evidence stimulated somewhat the rather ex- 
 aggerated expressions of loyalty I heard around 
 me. In five minutes many descriptions of the 
 explosion had been supplied to me, most of 
 them in contradiction with each other, and 
 
THE OPERA. 255 
 
 I began to feel that I had exhausted the public 
 sources of information available on the Boule- 
 vard. So I turned up the Chaussee d'Antin to 
 see if it was possible to get through the Rue de 
 Provence to the Rue Le Pelletier. Before I had 
 gone ten yards I met a friend who told me he 
 had made the attempt, had been turned back by 
 the police, and that he was certain it was idle to 
 try to reach the Opera in any direction whatever. 
 As he hurried on to carry the news to his club, I 
 asked myself suddenly how the people inside the 
 Opera would get away ? If nobody on foot could 
 reach the entrance, it was clear that no carriage 
 could arrive there either; and the fate of the 
 ladies began to interest me, especially as the 
 night was cheerless and cold. So I risked say- 
 ing to a passing policeman, " I have friends in 
 the Opera, and am anxious about them. How 
 will they come out ? " For a wonder, he was 
 civil. He answered, " Well, the people, I be- 
 lieve, are coming away now, on foot, round by 
 the back streets. I don't think anybody is 
 allowed to go by the Boulevard. I have seen 
 nothing myself, but that is what I hear from 
 my comrades on the beat." I thanked him, 
 and went on up the Chaussee d'Antin to see 
 if this was true. The crowd was thickening 
 
256 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 everywhere, for people were arriving from all 
 parts of Paris ; feelings of rage and horror, and 
 particularly of shame, were being expressed in 
 loud voices. I pressed on as well as I could, 
 and, with considerable difficulty, squeezed my- 
 self at last to the corner of the Rue St Lazare, 
 where the road was closed by a cordon of police. 
 In vain did I appeal to the sergents de ville, and 
 urge that I was searching for news of friends ; 
 they refused to listen to me or to the dozen 
 other persons who wanted to pass for the same 
 reason. I saw, however, through the shoulders 
 of the people in front of me, that ladies in 
 evening dress were hurrying along the Rue St 
 Lazare, which, at that point, appeared to be kept 
 free for them, and I recognised that a portion 
 of the audience was really escaping that way. 
 My alarm as to the fate of many acquain- 
 tances who, I knew, were at the Opera that 
 night, grew stronger from contact with the 
 emotion of the crowd, and, after a good deal 
 of hesitation, I decided to go to the Rue Tron- 
 chet, to inquire if some great friends who lived 
 there, and whose night it was, had returned 
 home. I found the concierge asleep, and for half 
 a minute could not make him understand my 
 errand ; but when he had woke up and compre- 
 
THE OPERA. 257 
 
 bended, he burst into a violent commotion, 
 jumped out of bed, flung on his cfothes, and 
 declared that he would go at once to arrest 
 the murderers and pick up the wounded. I had 
 some difficulty in persuading him that he had 
 better leave those functions to the police, and 
 that his duty was to let the servants know 
 what had happened, so that they might make 
 up big fires and have boiling water ready for 
 their mistress and her daughters (who had not 
 come home). So there he and I stopped, wait- 
 ing nervously, listening for steps in the street, 
 till suddenly, at midnight, the bell rang sharply, 
 and in they came, half frozen and terribly up- 
 set. They crouched before the fires and shiv- 
 ered a good deal, from excitement quite as much 
 as from cold. They knew almost less than I 
 did: they had heard the explosion faintly, and 
 did not ask what it meant ; but in two or three 
 minutes the news ran like fire round the house ; 
 everybody rose ; many left their places to inquire ; 
 the panic was intense. Suddenly the Emperor 
 and Empress were in their box, came to the 
 front, and, very pale but very self -controlled, 
 faced the audience. Then out burst frantic 
 cheering, wild, furious, unrepressible ; it con- 
 tinued for minutes; the women waving hand- 
 
 R 
 
258 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 kerchiefs, most of them with tears in their 
 eyes; the sovereigns bowing. It was impos- 
 sible to think of continuing the performance; 
 the shouting was too tremendous, too enthusi- 
 astic, too lasting to leave room for anything 
 else. After a quarter of an hour (to allow 
 time for fetching fresh carriages, instead of the 
 damaged ones) the Emperor and Empress left 
 again, amidst roars and tempests of bravos. 
 Then everybody tried to go away, but found 
 it could not be managed. The street was 
 impassable partly from damage done, partly 
 from the constant carrying away of wounded 
 (many of whom had been hit in the houses), 
 partly from the stoppage of circulation by the 
 police. So there they all had to remain until 
 a passage was arranged for them, and they 
 could be despatched successively. My friends 
 were too disturbed to remember more, and the 
 little they did know was not at all clear in 
 their heads. They could not find a cab, but 
 were accompanied in their walk by two gentle- 
 men, who, when they had seen them inside 
 their door, hastened to their own homes to 
 relieve the anxiety of their families. 
 
 Next morning the details began to take a 
 form ; but, if I remember correctly, it was not 
 
THE OPERA. 259 
 
 for two or three days that the authors of the 
 attack were traced and caught. 
 
 It was what is known in history as the Orsini 
 plot. 
 
 The shake of Madame Bosio has left me 
 an impression of another sort. It was as- 
 serted and believed that nobody else ever 
 possessed such a shake, and assuredly it was 
 utterly bewildering. It was smooth as the 
 surface of calm water, rhythmical as the beat- 
 ing of a clock, pulsating as the throb of an 
 engine, enduring as an unknown quantity. No 
 bird ever carolled more trillingly, no star ever 
 scintillated more brilliantly, no diamond ever 
 sparkled more dazzlingly. When we knew that 
 shake was coming, we strained our ears in pre- 
 paration ; while it lasted we held our breath in 
 fascination ; when it ended we shouted out ap- 
 plause in intoxication. Of course it was purely 
 mechanical ; of course there was no passion in 
 it ; of course it was mere vocal dexterity, and 
 in no way the lyrical expression of a feeling; 
 but, all the same, it was as utterly apart in 
 song as was the floating of Taglioni in dance. 
 Amongst the luminosities which here and there 
 light up my memories of the Paris Opera, I 
 put it high. 
 
260 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 Another reminiscence is not personal to me, 
 for I was not present at the scenes which com- 
 pose it ; but as it offers interest of a special 
 sort, and as I have often heard the scenes 
 described by those who saw them, I venture 
 to include an allusion to them. Under the 
 influence of Princess Metternich, whose hus- 
 band had come in the preceding year to France 
 as Austrian Ambassador, " Tannhauser " was 
 played at the Paris Opera in March 1861. It 
 was hissed, howled at, scorned, and driven 
 off ! Paris could not bear it ! After three 
 tumultuous representations it was withdrawn. 
 At that time no political feeling was involved : 
 France and Prussia were good friends. The 
 objections were derived not from international 
 enmity, but from profound and thoroughly hon- 
 est repugnance to the music. The opera-going 
 public of the Second Empire wanted to be 
 amused, not bored, and " Tannhauser " bored. 
 A horrid mot was made about it : " Qa tanne 
 aux airs et 9a embete aux morceaux." The 
 result was that society misbehaved itself. The 
 three evenings were passed in riot not violent, 
 but contemptuous. It is not often that the 
 public of the Opera rejects the dishes placed 
 before it ; on that occasion it did so unmis- 
 
THE OPERA. 26l 
 
 takably, subject to changing its mind thirty 
 years afterwards. It has now learnt to adore 
 what it then reviled. 
 
 I conclude by the end, as is becoming. One 
 of the pleasantest and most amusing of the 
 very various contents of an evening at the Paris 
 Opera, and certainly the portion which affords 
 the most favourable opportunity for observation 
 of local types and manners, is the process 
 of going away. Of course all goings - away 
 are more or less alike, no matter in what 
 country they are performed; but there is, 
 nevertheless, something in the Paris fashion 
 of doing it, something supremely living, which 
 is altogether proper to itself. When the break- 
 up comes ; when the staircase is so crowded 
 with descenders from all the floors (rather 
 different from its state that night when I 
 alone was on it) that they have to wait 
 on every step ; when, at last, the emerging 
 crowd arrives in the great entrance-hall below, 
 then meetings multiply, and chattering bursts 
 out feverishly, conscious that it has reached 
 its final moments, and that it may be stopped 
 abruptly at any instant by the announcement 
 of the carnage. The groupings and un- 
 groupings of the throng, the shifting shapings 
 
262 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 of the knots of men and women, are incessant. 
 Goodbye is heard in every tone and language. 
 The scene is made more curious or at all 
 events more representative by the mixture 
 of classes. The entire audience is there, from 
 top to bottom. Bonnets and shawls pass side 
 by side with diamonds and resplendent cloaks. 
 And as, at that moment, the doors are no longer 
 guarded, any decent-looking person from outside 
 can come in and contemplate. It is a strange 
 confusion of brilliancy and shabbiness, with a 
 good deal of the always evident effort to look 
 dressed with insufficient means. Typical ex- 
 amples of Paris women are all about. The 
 Duchesse des Sept Croisades, her tongue 
 ejaculating to three men at once ; her ugly 
 little petulant face scrambling effervescingly 
 out of a jungle of lace; the infinite elegance 
 of her person spreading radiance around her 
 (sharp contrasts between face and person are 
 special marks of Paris) ; her rose satin skirts 
 held daintily and rather loftily away from pos- 
 sible obnoxious contacts ; her delicate feet 
 reflected glimmeringly on the dark marble 
 of the floor, is gazed upon by two admiring, 
 though manifestly jealous, work -girls, totally 
 awake and partially attractive, from the gallery. 
 
THE OPERA. 263 
 
 Three stiff, frumpish Englishwomen, who look 
 excessively out of place in that animated 
 gathering, are staring with wonder at her 
 gestures and her noise, and in half awed 
 whispers are expressing shocked astonishment 
 to each other. In contrast with the Duchesse, 
 Madame de V. stands cold, silent, stately ; 
 a very high model of actual Frenchwomen, 
 immensely distinguished, but, like all the rest 
 of them, distinguished rather than aristocratic. 
 The young lady who is known as the " Cali- 
 fornian nugget " has removed herself a little 
 apart from the friends who brought her, and 
 is surrounded by a thick circle of young gentle- 
 men, each one of whom is doing his utmost, 
 according to his lights, to persuade her that 
 he alone can make her happy. Regarded as 
 a public exhibition of various devices of love- 
 making (most of them of an extremely ele- 
 mentary nature) the scene may have interest 
 for the worldly philosopher ; otherwise it can 
 scarcely be considered to constitute an at- 
 tractive element of the show. Madame de K. 
 hurries out on the arm of C., leaving behind 
 her, in coruscating Waves, the wide wake of 
 glances and admiration, of smiles and saluta- 
 tions, which constitutes une sortie triomphale. 
 
264 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 Others follow, at each instant, with much frou- 
 frou of silk, and with more or less last words, 
 last laughings, and last shruggings. Unfortun- 
 ately it is invariably the smartest people who 
 get away first, because their servants know their 
 business and bring up the carriages at once; 
 while the dowdies are, as invariably, the last. 
 The perfection of the exhibition endures therefore 
 only for some five minutes : during that period 
 the movement is so fermenting and so vivid, so 
 stirred by the restlessness of its components, 
 so lighted by brilliancies, so diversified by 
 contrasts of types and ways, that it affords 
 a very special view of Paris. There is nothing 
 in it like the beauty of faces one sees in London 
 on similar occasions ; but there is an immensely 
 greater air and consciousness of vitality, more 
 indeed, by very far, than in the waiting-hall 
 of any other opera-house in Europe. It is not 
 only vitality, it is almost eagerness; everybody 
 lives acutely for the instant. Suddenly it 
 is finished ; all is empty ; the gas goes out ; 
 another Opera night is over. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 INDOOR LIFE. 
 
 NOTWITHSTANDING the amalgamating action 
 of the new international influences which have 
 come into operation during the present century, 
 the ancient differences persist between the 
 exterior habits, the personal looks, and the 
 ways of behaving of the peoples of Europe : 
 they are weakened, but they are not suppressed. 
 The upper classes of various lands whose 
 educational surroundings are becoming more 
 and more alike are approximating rapidly to 
 each other in appearance and manners ; but 
 even amongst them diversities continue to sub- 
 sist which, slight as they are in comparison 
 with what they used to be, are, nevertheless, 
 obviously perceptible. And when we look at 
 the masses, variations glare at us. Who has 
 ever crossed a frontier without being impressed 
 
266 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 by their abundance ? In that striking example 
 the suddenness of the change augments its 
 volume ; the world of just now has disappeared 
 abruptly, and an utterly transformed one has 
 assumed its place the dress, the physical 
 aspect, the language, even the movements, 
 of the people round us have become other. 
 After a period of residence in a country, a 
 certain amount of habit forms itself; the eye 
 and ear become accustomed ; but at the instant 
 of first entry almost every detail surprises by its 
 strangeness, and evidence enough is supplied 
 to us that, on the outside, nations are still 
 strikingly dissimilar. 
 
 I say "on the outside," because what is 
 viewed in ordinary travel is nothing but out- 
 side the railway-station, the port, the street, 
 the shop, the theatre, and the hotel. The in- 
 door life of other lands lies, almost always, 
 beyond the reach of the foreigner : rarely can 
 he enter it at all, or, if he does scrape into it 
 a little, he does not crawl beyond its fringes ; 
 he is not admitted to live in it, with it, and 
 of it, and, in most cases, remains uninformed 
 as to its true nature, and as to the realities of 
 national peculiarity which it reveals. Even 
 pf a city so much visited and so much talked 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 267 
 
 about as Paris, most travellers know nothing 
 intimately; it is only here and there, by 
 accident, privilege, or relationship, that a few 
 strangers (very few) manage to get inside its 
 doors. The French keep their dwellings resol- 
 utely shut ; they have small curiosity about 
 foreign persons or things, dislike to have their 
 habits disturbed by intruders ; are dominated 
 especially since 1871 by the bitterest patriotic 
 hates, are in no degree cosmopolitan, are 
 passionately convinced of the superiority of 
 France over the rest of the world, and, for 
 these reasons, though a very sociable race 
 amongst themselves, shrink instinctively and 
 mistrustfully from people of other blood. Of 
 course there are amongst the great houses of 
 Paris a few in which diplomatists and travellers 
 of rank are habitually received ; but those 
 houses constitute exceptions : they stand apart ; 
 and even in them it is rare to see foreigners 
 form intimacies with the French. I could 
 mention singular examples of the extreme 
 difficulty of becoming real friends with them, 
 even when circumstances are of a nature to 
 arouse friendship; but such examples would 
 necessitate personal details, and personal details 
 point to names, which, where private individuals 
 
268 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 are concerned, it is impossible to mention, 
 or even to suggest. Subsidiarily, as regards 
 ourselves in particular, our shyness, and our 
 usually insufficient knowledge of languages, and 
 of current topics of conversation and of 
 the manner of treating them, raise up special 
 barriers in our way. The immense majority 
 of those who go to Paris are, therefore, unable 
 to perceive anything indoors with their own 
 eyes ; and it is only from French books and from 
 reports made to them by such fellow-country- 
 men as, in consequence of special circumstances, 
 have been able to look in, that they can learn 
 anything exact of what is going on behind the 
 walls they stare at. As I have looked in long 
 and closely, I venture to add to the second of 
 the two classes of information some of the 
 indoor experiences I have collected. 
 
 But, before I begin descriptions, I must make 
 some preliminary observations as regards the 
 situation of the subject. 
 
 The strongest of all my notions, in looking 
 back to my experiences in Paris and in com- 
 paring them with those I have encountered 
 in other lands, is that, notwithstanding all 
 the superficial contrasts notwithstanding the 
 differences of material organisation, of ways, 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 269 
 
 and even of habits of thought and of national 
 
 
 
 character the objects, rules, and practical con- 
 ditions of existence remain substantially the 
 same everywhere. Exterior looks and details, 
 mannerisms, feelings, temperaments and convic- 
 tions vary endlessly ; but, nevertheless, the main 
 issues come out very nearly identical. It cannot 
 be pretended, for instance, that the French 
 differ fundamentally from the English because 
 they eat a meal called breakfast at half-past 
 eleven, instead of a meal called lunch at half- 
 past one ; because they have their children to 
 dine with them, instead of sending them to bed, 
 on bread and milk, at seven ; because their 
 servants leave them at a week's notice instead 
 of a month's; because they pay their house- 
 rent on the I5th of January, April, July, and 
 October, instead of what we call quarter-days ; 
 because they have (or rather used to have) 
 more elaborate manners than ourselves, and 
 shrug their shoulders more ; because they say 
 "two times" for "twice"; or because they 
 talk more volubly than we do. These differ- 
 ences, and a hundred others of the same value, 
 are not in reality differences at all; they are 
 surface accidents they constitute variety to the 
 eye but not to the mind. However numerous 
 
270 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 and however evident such outside variations 
 may be, they do not affect the general likeness 
 of all the workings out of human nature any 
 more than the immense diversity of husks affects 
 the methodical germination of the seeds within 
 them. This view may, perhaps, be regarded as 
 incorrect by the ordinary traveller, because to 
 him the smallest newness appears, usually, to 
 be significant, the slightest strangeness full of 
 meaning. But to ancient wanderers, who have 
 had time to grow inured and opportunity to 
 become acclimatised, who have worn off aston- 
 ishments, who have learnt by long rubbing 
 against others that local demeanours do not 
 change either the head or the heart, the con- 
 viction of universal unity becomes unshakable. 
 In their eyes the vast majority of European 
 men and women are animated by exactly the 
 same passions, the same vanities, the same 
 general tendencies, whatever be their birthplace. 
 In their eyes external dissimilarities, which 
 seem at first sight to differentiate nations so 
 markedly, are mere skin-deep tokens, affecting 
 only the secondary and unessential elements of 
 existence, and serving simply as convenient 
 distinctive badges. The contacts of travel have 
 taught them that, though it is natural to attach 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 271 
 
 curiosity to visible national peculiarities, it would 
 be a mistake to expect to find behind them any 
 corresponding divergences of inner essence. 
 
 Even national character which has shown 
 itself everywhere hitherto as a thoroughly endur- 
 ing reality, and which does not exhibit in any of 
 its developments the faintest signs of coming 
 change scarcely produces in our day any abso- 
 lute distinction between the motives and the 
 methods of life-organisation in various countries. 
 It is, of all race-marks, the one which exercises 
 the most effect on public conduct; but I have met 
 nowhere any reasons for believing that it changes 
 the constitution of private and personal exist- 
 ence. By its nature, and for its habitual forms 
 of exhibition, it requires a wider field of opera- 
 tion than it finds indoors. It is strikingly dis- 
 tinct, constant, and energetic in its patriotic 
 and collective manifestations ; but its effects are 
 infinitely less evident in small home matters. 
 
 Taking nationality as an accumulative desig- 
 nation for the entire group of diversities which 
 distinguish nations from each other, it cannot 
 be said to govern, in any appreciable degree, 
 the essential composition of the indoor life of 
 peoples. It works strongly in other directions, 
 but scarcely at all in that one. It does not 
 
272 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 introduce, in any land, home elements which 
 are entirely unknown elsewhere. 
 
 For this reason, in speaking of the indoor 
 life of Paris, I shall not have much to say 
 of radical differences; there are scarcely any. 
 Even details, with all their copious variety, do 
 not preserve, on examination, the vividness of 
 contrast which they present at first sight. Just 
 as moral principles (under similar conditions of 
 education) exist everywhere in broad averages; 
 just as they show themselves, all about, in fairly 
 equal proportions like vice and virtue, intelli- 
 gence and stupidity, health and disease so do 
 the main conditions of indoor life run, in all 
 countries, in parallel grooves, slightly twisted, 
 here and there, by superficialities. What there 
 is to tell, therefore, is about impressions rather 
 than about facts, about sensations rather than 
 about sights, almost indeed about resemblances 
 rather than about differences. 
 
 But, what is indoor life ? To some it repre- 
 sents little more than mere family existence; 
 to others, on the contrary, it is but an addi- 
 tional name for society; to others, again, it 
 represents a temporary separation from the 
 world, during which we put off the constraints 
 in which we enwrap ourselves in public, and 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 273 
 
 relapse momentarily into the undistorted real- 
 ities of self. With these wide oppositions of 
 interpretation (and there are more besides), it 
 is impossible for any of us to speak of indoor 
 life with the certainty that we mean by it 
 the same thing as others do. And not only 
 does it change its aspects, its objects, and its 
 significations with the individual point of view 
 of each of us, but also with the persons at 
 whom we happen to look. I speak, therefore, 
 of the indoor life of Paris for myself alone, 
 describing not so much what I have seen in 
 it as what I have felt in it ; recognising heartily 
 that every other witness has a right to disagree 
 with me, and recognising it all the more because, 
 on such a subject, it is on instincts and ideas 
 proper to each one, rather than on indisputable 
 verities evident to all, that spectators base their 
 very varying judgments. 
 
 On one doctrine only is everybody likely to 
 be in accord with everybody else. That doc- 
 trine is that indoor life, whatever else it may 
 be taken to import, implies essentially the life 
 of women, and that its nature shifts about 
 with the action of the women who create it. 
 This doctrine, true everywhere, is especially 
 true of Paris ; for there, more than anywhere, 
 
 s 
 
274 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 certain women stand out before and above all 
 their fellows as the national producers of the 
 brightest forms of its indoor life. That life 
 is made by them and for them ; they manu- 
 facture it in its perfected attractiveness ; and, 
 above all, they typify it. They are so thor- 
 oughly both the composers and the actors of 
 the piece, that a description of it does not 
 signify much more than a description of the 
 women who play it. 
 
 But this is true of very few indeed amongst 
 the women of Paris. They all lead, in general 
 terms, the same sort of indoor life, so far as 
 its outlines are concerned ; yet scarcely any 
 of them help to shape or guide it in what 
 constitutes its national aspects. Acquaintance 
 with it shows that the mass of them follow it 
 passively, but neither originate it nor enkindle 
 it. They are content with dull humdrum ex- 
 istences, and take no part in the active com- 
 position of the typical aspects of the place. 
 They do their duty placidly, as wives, mothers, 
 and housekeepers ; they are, most of them, 
 worthy, excellent, estimable persons ; most of 
 them smoulder in inertness. I remember how 
 astonished I was at the beginning, when I was 
 still under the influence of the fanciful teach- 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 275 
 
 ings of my youth, to discover, by degrees, that 
 Paris women were not, as I had been assured 
 by my British instructors of those days, all 
 worldly, all pleasure -seeking, all love-making, 
 all dress-adoring ; but that the majority of them 
 were quiet, steady, horne-cherishing, devoid of 
 all aggressive personality, animated by a keen 
 sense of moral duty. Such is their nature 
 still, modified only, in certain cases, by the 
 action of that wonderful French faculty, adapt- 
 ability, which fits those who possess it for 
 any social or even leading role. Unluckily, the 
 faculty itself is rare, and, of those who own 
 it, a good many have neither the ambition nor 
 the power to use it, and remain, just as most 
 women do in other lands, unproductive in their 
 nullity. They are French in the details of 
 their ways and habits ; but the great heap of 
 them might just as well be anything else, so 
 far as any national fruitfulness is concerned. 
 It is not they who stand out as the makers 
 and the beacons of the bright life of Paris; 
 that part is played by a very restricted min- 
 ority, which, small as it is, lights up so vividly 
 the circles round it, that it seems to represent 
 the nation all alone before the world. The 
 fireside goodnesses of the majority are to be 
 
276 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 seen, almost in the same forms, in any other 
 country; but the fertile arts and the sparkling 
 devices of the minority are special to Paris: 
 they cannot be found outside it ; and, even 
 there, they are utterly exceptional. But, scarce 
 though they be, they constitute, all by them- 
 selves, the most striking elements of indoor life, 
 for they alone bring into evidence the processes 
 employed by the higher Paris woman. 
 
 By the " higher Paris woman " I do not mean 
 the woman of the higher classes only, but the 
 woman of the higher capacities, whatever be 
 her class, provided only she applies them. It 
 is essential to insist on this, for in Paris capac- 
 ity does not necessarily follow class. It is, of 
 course, more frequent amongst the well-born, 
 because of their advantages of heredity, of 
 training, and of models : but birth alone can- 
 not bestow it; it is to be found in every 
 educated layer ; like adaptability, it may be 
 discovered anywhere. Capacity, in the sense 
 I have in view, may be denned, roughly and 
 approximately, as the power of creating a 
 home to which everybody is tempted to come, 
 and of reigning in that home over all who 
 visit it. It is a purely social ability, for it 
 can only be exercised in society ; but it is 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 277 
 
 attainable by any woman who has the con- 
 sciousness of its germ within her, and who has, 
 or can manufacture, the tools and the oppor- 
 tunities to develop it. The European reputa- 
 tion of the social life of Paris proceeds almost 
 exclusively from the fitness of a few women 
 in each group. The men count for very little 
 the other women for nothing at all. The 
 other women make up the universal crowd, 
 with its universal qualities and its universal 
 defects : they manage conscientiously their own 
 little lives, but they exhibit nothing of true 
 French brilliancies, and it is those brilliancies 
 alone which attract the attention and excite 
 the admiration of the world. 
 
 But, alas ! the woman who does possess the 
 brilliancies is disappearing rapidly; she is be- 
 coming almost a creature of the past; which 
 fact supplies another motive for trying to 
 describe her while some patterns of her still 
 exist. 
 
 And now, having explained the situation in 
 its main lines, I can begin to try to sketch 
 such elements of the indoor life of Paris as 
 seem to me to be worth remembering. 
 
 It follows from what I have already said that 
 that life is divided into two clearly distinguish- 
 
278 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 able divisions the work of the mass, and the 
 work of the minority. In speaking of the 
 characteristics of the mass, it is difficult to 
 use general statements, because no wording, 
 however elastic, can apply to everybody; be- 
 cause there are exceptions to every rule ; be- 
 cause the little diversities of natures and of 
 ways (even when all are dominated by the 
 same principles of action) are endless. All 
 that can be done safely is to indicate certain 
 main features of temperament and behaviour, 
 and to declare expressly that those features 
 are not universal, and that no single picture 
 can portray every face. 
 
 The ordinary Paris woman, who makes up 
 the mass, is rarely interesting as a national 
 product. There is seldom anything about her 
 that is markedly different from the woman of 
 elsewhere. Occasionally she dresses well ; oc- 
 casionally she wears her clothes well, and, in 
 that matter, does stand, here and there, some- 
 what apart ; occasionally she is smart, but 
 much more often she is not smart at all, and 
 is sometimes altogether dowdy. When it was 
 the fashion to be comme il faut, nearly every 
 woman did her best to reach the standard ol 
 the period, because it corresponded to her in- 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 
 
 nate idea of quiet. But now that strong effects 
 have taken the place of distinction, she has, 
 in many cases, become indifferent and neglects 
 herself. Superiorities of any sort are rare in 
 her, just as they are elsewhere. Of course she 
 has local peculiarities, but peculiarities do not 
 necessarily constitute superiorities. In one re- 
 spect, however, the French woman through- 
 out the land does stand high, she possesses, 
 as a rule, vigorous home affections : they are, 
 indeed, so vigorous that, taking her class as 
 a whole, I doubt whether the corresponding 
 women of any other race arrive at the deep 
 home tenderness which she shows and feels. 
 Her respect for the ties and duties of relation- 
 ship is carried so far that, under its impulsion, 
 there are positively (although she is not al- 
 ways quite pleased about it) examples of three 
 generations living permanently together, ap- 
 parently in harmony ! Her attitude towards 
 her children is one of great love : they live, 
 in most cases, entirely with her, and constitute 
 the main object of her existence. I do not 
 pretend that the bringing up which results 
 therefrom is the best in the world that 
 question lies outside the present matter but 
 I do maintain that a very striking feature of 
 
280 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 the indoor life of Paris, regarded in its family 
 aspects, is the intensity of the attachment and 
 devotedness of the women to their parents 
 and their children, and their sympathy for 
 other relations. Their husbands, perhaps, are 
 not invariably included in this overflowing 
 sweetness. Of course there are women who 
 care nothing for either their children or any 
 one else ; but the rule is, incontestably, through- 
 out all ranks, that all are strangely full of the 
 home tie. 
 
 The perception of family duties is, indeed, so 
 keen, as a general state, that the whole race 
 obtains from it a basis for the construction of 
 home happiness in a solid (though stolid and 
 prosy) shape, and, if happiness could be built 
 up with one material alone, could reasonably 
 hope to enjoy a good deal of it. Unfortu- 
 nately, however, for everybody else as well as 
 for the French, such little happiness as seems 
 to exist about the earth is derived evidently 
 from the joint action of so many and such 
 composite causes (and from individual char- 
 acter even more than from any outer cause 
 whatever), that one single faculty, no matter 
 how important or how robust it may be, does 
 not suffice to beget it. In the particular case 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 28l 
 
 of the average Paris woman, we cannot help 
 recognising, whenever we get a clear' sight of 
 her indoors, with her mask off, in a condition 
 of momentarily ungilded authenticity, that, not- 
 withstanding the acuteness of her family senti- 
 ment, she obtains from it no more active 
 happiness than falls to the lot of her less 
 family-loving neighbour in other lands. 
 
 If she extracts distinct contentment from 
 any one source, it is from a totally different 
 one from the consciousness that, with all 
 the habitual dulness of her existence (I speak, 
 of course, of the average mass), she possesses, 
 in certain cases, a handiness proper to her- 
 self, a quick perceptivity, a faculty of absorp- 
 tion, appropriation, and reproduction of other 
 people's ideas, a capacity for utilising occa- 
 sions. In this direction she does possess 
 sometimes a national superiority. But this 
 most useful characteristic is very far from 
 universal : the great majority of Paris women 
 do not possess an atom of it ; and further- 
 more, when it does exist, it is, in most of its 
 examples, rather mental than practical, it 
 shows itself in words rather than in acts. 
 For instance, the women of the present day 
 are rarely good musicians ; scarcely any of 
 
282 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 them can paint, or sing, or write; very few 
 indeed can cook or make dresses; very few 
 read much, in comparison with the English 
 or the Germans; but a portion of them can 
 talk sparklingly of what they pick up from 
 others. Of this form of talent (when she has 
 it) the Paris woman is, with reason, proud; 
 and satisfied vanity is to many natures to 
 hers in particular a fertile root of joy. 
 Speaking generally, and excluding all the 
 heavy people, mental handiness may be said 
 to be one of her distinguishing marks. She 
 is enthusiastic about moral qualities, especially 
 when she thinks she can attribute them to 
 herself; but, as a rule, she puts above them 
 in her desires the capacities of personal action 
 which can aid her to get on. Her nature is 
 not often either generous or liberal, but it 
 is occasionally very religious. She has a 
 tendency to attach importance to small things ; 
 the sense of proportion and of relative values 
 is often weak in her, with the consequence 
 that she follows, half instinctively, a life in 
 which trifles play a large part, and such 
 powers of productive usefulness as she may 
 possess are a good deal wasted on unessential 
 occupations. 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 283 
 
 Amongst the trading classes, where the 
 wives so often share the business ' work of 
 the husbands, there is sometimes a look of 
 real solidity of purpose ; but it cannot be 
 said that in the middle and upper ranks, 
 notwithstanding the abundance of their gen- 
 eral virtues, there is much appearance of 
 steady earnestness. There is eagerness rather 
 than energy, vivacity rather than vigour, rest- 
 lessness rather than industry. I should not 
 like to say that the ordinary Paris woman 
 possesses no earnestness, but I have often 
 asked myself whether, as a rule, she really 
 has any. The fact that their language con- 
 tains no word for earnestness, or indeed for 
 any of the forms of thoroughness, does seem 
 to suggest that the French have no need of 
 expressing the idea which the word conveys ; 
 though when they are told this they answer 
 triumphantly, "But we have serieux!" Now 
 serieux, which is employed both as a substan- 
 tive and an adjective, does not in any way 
 correspond to earnestness or earnest ; it im- 
 plies a certain gravity, a certain ponderosity, 
 and even, in many cases, a certain portentous 
 solemnity. The state is common to the two 
 sexes, and to be thought serieux is an object 
 
284 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 of ambition to some men and to some women. 
 It does not involve knowledge, or labour, or 
 determination ; but it does purport suprem- 
 acy over the follies of life. Of course there 
 are " des personnes serieuses," who are so by 
 natural inclination, and whose serieux means 
 merely quietness, correctness, and preference 
 for calm duty ; in all of which, again, there 
 is nothing of what we understand by earnest- 
 ness. The absence of earnestness is not com- 
 pensated by the presence of serieux (when it 
 is present), and there remains, on the whole, 
 a worthy, affectionate, dutiful life, often a 
 little gloomy, sometimes intelligent, scarcely 
 ever intellectual, life like what it is anywhere 
 else, neither more brilliant nor more pro- 
 ductive, but with differences of detail. 
 
 The women who lead this average life have, 
 naturally, their social occupations too, their 
 social vanities, and their struggles after place; 
 some of them possess distinct aptitudes for 
 the little battle, and fight it with what they 
 conceive to be success. But that side of the 
 subject is only really interesting amongst the 
 minority, to whom I am coming in an instant. 
 
 The men generally (unless they have fixed 
 occupations) live the indoor life of their families, 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 285 
 
 excepting during the time they pas in the 
 little room which most of them possess under 
 the title of " le cabinet de Monsieur." What 
 they do in that little room I have never dis- 
 covered to my satisfaction, though I have em- 
 ployed almost half a century in searching. 
 They seem contented, but they do not aid 
 much to shape the family existence that is 
 the function of their wives. It is surprising 
 that men who exhibit so much movement, 
 and even so much excitement, about outdoor 
 things, should be so passive and inoperative 
 indoors. There is nothing to be said about 
 them in connection with the subject I am 
 discussing. 
 
 The material conditions of the life of the 
 mass are, on the whole, comfortable. On 
 many points there are sharp differences 
 between French arrangements and ours : there 
 is generally, for instance, far more finish of 
 furniture with them, and somewhat more 
 finish of service with us. The look of the 
 rooms is certainly prettier and gayer in Paiis 
 than in London, partly because the walls, 
 the chairs, the tables, are more decorative, 
 and the colours of the stuffs and hangings 
 lighter and brighter; partly because chintz 
 
286 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 coverings are never seen, the clearness of the 
 air allowing everything to remain unhidden. 
 There are many more mirrors; ornaments 
 lie about more abundantly, and in greater 
 variety of nature and effect. The grouping 
 of the whole is far less regular, less stiff, more 
 intimate. This advantage is most marked in 
 the drawing-rooms ; it continues, in a less de- 
 gree, in the bedrooms ; there are traces of it in 
 some of the dining-rooms. But the setting out 
 of the table is almost always inferior to ours, 
 both in detail and as a picture ; and (barring 
 the great houses) the servants wait with less 
 attention and less experience. I speak, of 
 course, in the most general terms and of the 
 broad average, taking no notice of the excep- 
 tions, on either side. As regards comfort, it 
 can scarcely be asserted that the inhabitants 
 of either of the two countries live better, on the 
 whole, than the others. 
 
 Most Paris women stay so much indoors 
 that their material surroundings at home are 
 of particular importance to them. Many of 
 them go out only once a-day, for an hour or 
 two perhaps. The vast majority have still, 
 notwithstanding the change that is coming 
 over them, no outdoor amusements. Indeed, 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 287 
 
 viewing amusement as a serious oecupation, 
 there is vastly more of it in London than in 
 Paris, or in any other city in the world. No 
 people run after amusement so insatiably as the 
 English : they are at it all day, in some form. 
 The Parisians, on the contrary, take their 
 pleasures mainly in the evening, and almost 
 always rest in peace till the afternoon ; those 
 who ride or do anything in the morning are 
 infinitely few. As a practice, they do not dress 
 for dinner when they are alone ; the mass of 
 them give scarcely any dinner-parties to friends 
 or acquaintances; they leave them to the 
 minority, who employ them largely ; but, as a 
 consequence of their family attachments, they 
 constantly have relatives to share their gigot. 
 There are no day-nurseries for children, who 
 live in the drawing-room, or a bedroom, with 
 their mothers, and learn there to become little 
 men and women. There are no old maids, 
 mainly because almost every girl marries young : 
 if any fail to find a husband (which happens 
 rarely), they vanish out of sight ; unmarried 
 women over thirty are scarcely known or heard 
 of in Paris ; the thousand duties to which they 
 apply themselves in England are left undis- 
 charged in France. Finally, no visitors come 
 
288 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 to stay in a Paris house partly because it is 
 not the custom, partly because there is no spare 
 room, which is the better reason of the two. 
 
 I come now to the minority, to the higher 
 women, to something in the indoor life of the 
 place which is unlike what is found elsewhere. 
 The higher women differ in nearly every detail 
 of their attitude from the mass which I have 
 just described almost as much, indeed, as art 
 differs from nature. Excepting that they too 
 are, usually, good mothers, there is scarcely 
 anything in common between them and the 
 others. Just as the mass live for the home, 
 so do the minority live for the world; and, 
 for a student of the world and its ways, there 
 is not to be discovered a more perfect type, for 
 it is a product of the very highest worldly art, 
 worked up with skill, will, and finish. It is 
 all the more a product of pure art because, as 
 I have already remarked, the higher Paris 
 woman may be found outside the highest 
 social class, and may be manufactured out of 
 any suitable material. The particular position 
 which is created by birth is not indispensable 
 to her: it bestows a brilliancy the more, but 
 that is all. The woman of whom I am speaking 
 may be of any rank, provided she possesses 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 289 
 
 the requisite abilities, and provided she can 
 gather round her a group worthy of her hand- 
 ling. And this is the more true because, with 
 some evident exceptions, social station in Paris 
 does not depend exclusively, or even mainly, 
 on the causes which bestow it elsewhere, on 
 birth or name, on title or on money : they all 
 aid, they aid largely ; but not one of them is 
 absolutely requisite. Even money, powerful 
 as it is, is less conquering in Paris than in 
 London, as certain persons have discovered, 
 who, after failing to get recognised to their 
 satisfaction in the former city, have succeeded 
 in thrusting themselves to the front in the 
 latter. The Paris woman who wins position, 
 even if she possesses these four assistants, 
 owes her victory, not to them, but to herself, 
 to her own use of the powers within her. She 
 merits minute description, both in her person 
 and her acts. But here a difficulty arises. 
 Her acts can be set forth in as much detail 
 as is needed ; but her person and, for the 
 results that she begets, her person is as im- 
 portant as her acts cannot be depicted in 
 English. 
 
 The reason is, that the ideas which dominate 
 us as to the uses to which our language ought 
 T 
 
SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 to be applied prevent us from handling it freely 
 on such a subject. There are limits to the 
 application of English, limits which we have 
 laid down for ourselves, limits which exclude the 
 possibility of treating glowingly certain topics 
 without appearing to be ridiculous. To speak 
 of the feminine delicacies of a thorough Paris 
 woman, to show their influence on the crowd 
 around her and on the life she leads, and to 
 dissect their sources, their manifestations, and 
 their consequences, as the French do, would 
 be regarded by the British public as unworthy 
 of the solidity of British character. So, as her 
 person cannot be faithfully outlined without 
 French appreciations of its elegancies, without 
 employing French methods of photographic 
 portraiture, and without painting in French 
 colours the admiration it inspires ; and as those 
 French appreciations, methods, and colourings 
 would be regarded as "gushing" in English, 
 the person of the Paris woman must remain 
 undrawn by English pens. The difficulty does 
 not proceed from the English writer, but from 
 the English reader : the English language is 
 as capable as French is of telling the tale of 
 winning feminine refinements ; but our feeling 
 is against the employment of it for such friv- 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 2QI 
 
 olous purposes. We do not produce the same 
 human works of art, and are not accustomed 
 to English descriptions of them. The French 
 pages which narrate the perfections of women, 
 which write of details in detail and of graces 
 with grace, are read in France with eager 
 interest, because of the inherent attraction of 
 the subject to the French mind, and of the 
 amazing dexterity and finish which, from long 
 practice, have been acquired in the handling. 
 The story is so vivid that we see and hear 
 reality, so seductive that we bow before charm, 
 so adroitly told that we marvel at the author's 
 cunning. Even the English (a good many of 
 them at all events) read all this in French 
 with keen appreciation ; but in their present 
 mood they would call it silly in English. Our 
 literature loses by this exclusion which ex- 
 tends to other topics besides Frenchwomen a 
 quantity of opportunities which many writers 
 would, it may be presumed, be delighted to 
 utilise, but dare not, for fear of being scoffed 
 at. It is altogether inexact to argue that 
 " the genius of the French language " a much 
 employed but nearly meaningless expression 
 lends itself to wordings which cannot be ren- 
 dered in other tongues; it is not genius but 
 
292 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 habit which explains those wordings. French 
 has no monopoly of the phrases needed to 
 delineate personal elegance; neither has the 
 French mind any exclusive property of the 
 sentiment of physical symmetries, or of the 
 faculty of analysis of delicate perceptions and 
 of the sensations aroused by those perceptions. 
 Both the thinkings and the wordings would 
 be forthcoming elsewhere, if only readers 
 wanted them. The Belgians, for instance, 
 who use French, have no more of them than 
 we have, for the reason that, like us, they do 
 not feel the need of them. As things stand 
 at present, the person of the higher Parisienne 
 cannot be depicted diagnostically in English : 
 that element of the subject must be left out 
 here, which is a pity, not only because it is 
 the prettiest part of it, but also because the 
 exclusion lessens the field of discussion of 
 Paris indoor life. Her work alone remains to 
 be talked about. 
 
 The higher Frenchwoman, in the time of 
 her full glory, was essentially a leader of men : 
 from the Fronde downwards, the history of 
 France was full (fuller far than that of any 
 other land) of evidence of the influence of 
 women on its progress; but that influence, 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 2Q3 
 
 after waning steadily since the Revolution, 
 went entirely out of sight with the solidifica- 
 tion of the actual republic. After the war of 
 1870 it struggled on, under increasing diffi- 
 culties, until MacMahon resigned ; since his 
 time it has disappeared altogether. The 
 banishment of the men of the well - born 
 classes from all share in the government of 
 the country (not only because they are Con- 
 servatives, but even more because others want 
 the places which, for the greater part, they 
 formerly occupied) has necessarily brought 
 about the repudiation of the women too ; and 
 such of them as are not well - born suffer in 
 sympathy, for their cause is common. The 
 republicans avow that "la republique manque 
 de femmes," but it will never win the higher 
 women to it until, amongst other things, it 
 makes a place for them to work. At present 
 they are entirely shut away from contact with 
 the public life of France ; they have lost all 
 empire over the events of the time, and, in 
 consequence, they themselves have weakened. 
 It would be inexact to call them politicians, 
 in the English sense of the word; but they 
 are animated by a need of personal perform- 
 ance and productivity which cannot be satis- 
 
294 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 fied without dabbling, from however far off, 
 in current affairs. Their intelligence has 
 always sought for spheres of action ; but 
 Liberty, Equality, Fraternity " un songe entre 
 deux mensonges " have now suppressed all 
 spheres of action for them outside the walls 
 of their drawing-rooms. The so-called govern- 
 ing classes, to which, directly or indirectly, 
 a good many of them belonged, are replaced 
 by the nouvelles couches; the overthrow of the 
 classes as national instruments has entailed 
 the overthrow of the women as a national 
 force, and has reduced them to a purely 
 social function, which gives insufficient play 
 to their aspirations, and thrusts them back 
 into themselves. The rupture between society 
 and the republic is complete, and, apparently, 
 unmendable. Both lose by it ; but society 
 loses the most, because, though the republic 
 can prosper ruggedly without society, the 
 women of society (whatever be their birth) 
 cannot breathe healthily without the position 
 and the occupation which they formerly ob- 
 tained from contact with authority. 
 
 This decline affects them individually as well 
 as collectively, and because of it (amongst other 
 causes) they no longer present the very marked 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 2Q5 
 
 national lineaments which once belonged to 
 theni. There is still something to tell, both 
 of their cleverness and of their attractiveness ; 
 but, while the proportion of attractiveness 
 remains considerable, the proportion of clever- 
 ness has largely diminished. As it was, in 
 great part, by cleverness actively employed 
 effective, operative, prolific cleverness that 
 the foremost Paris women won the bright 
 place they once held before Europe, it is evi- 
 dent that the lessening of that cleverness 
 renders them less instructive to study. And 
 they themselves, some of them at least, are 
 at this moment, in other directions, wilfully 
 damaging their attractiveness too, by leaping 
 into the wave of masculinity which the English 
 have set surging, and by allowing their infinite 
 femininity of other days to be drowned by it. 
 Many of them have taken up and, with the 
 ardour of neophytes, have already surpassed 
 us in, the most conspicuous of the new exer- 
 cises which, under pretext of physical de- 
 velopment, English women have invented. 
 If size is to become the chief ambition of 
 women, if the merits of girls and wives are 
 to be measured by length, we ought to ask 
 the Germans and the Swedes how they man- 
 
SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 age to produce giants. They have plenty of 
 women six feet high, feminine and gentle in 
 their way, who could not distinguish between 
 a golf -club and a billiard -cue, or between a 
 racquet and a battledore, and who, though 
 they may have had in their childhood some 
 moderate practice of gymnastics, have never 
 given an hour to rude games, to riding on a 
 bicycle, or to any of the recent forms of 
 romping. It is possible that, some day, 
 women will once more become desirous to 
 remain women; but, for the moment, the 
 example offered by the English is unfemin- 
 ising France, and that effect, in addition to 
 political enfeeblement, renders many of the 
 Paris women of to-day different indeed from 
 what they used to be. Yet, in some of their 
 examples, they retain a portion of their former 
 selves, and continue to be something else than 
 others are. They are changed, lamentably 
 changed, as a general type; but memorials 
 of their former merit are still discoverable. 
 
 Manner, movement, dress, and talk are the 
 weapons of the higher Paris woman who con- 
 tinues to be exclusively a woman. She employs 
 them all in her relations with the world, on her 
 day, at her dinners, at her parties. On her 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 
 
 day a mob may come to her, because her door 
 is open to her entire acquaintance ; but, unless 
 she is a personage, her dinners and her parties 
 are usually kept small. A view of her on her 
 day is interesting, perhaps the most interesting 
 feminine spectacle in Paris, for she shows more 
 of her varied skill on that occasion than on any 
 other. She has to be everything to everybody 
 at once ; to graduate her welcomes ; to measure 
 her smiles ; to give their full rights of greeting 
 and of place to all her visitors, but no more 
 than the right of each; and, above all, not- 
 withstanding this calculated adjustment, to send 
 everybody away with the conviction that they, 
 in particular, were the very persons she most 
 wished to see. The power of listening is, in 
 such a case, almost more important than the 
 power of speaking, for there is no flattery so 
 irresistible as to lead stupid people to believe 
 you are intensely interested in what they say. 
 Towards those whom she wishes to impress, 
 she exhibits herself in her utmost winningness, 
 according to what she imagines to be their 
 accessible sides. To this one she throws scin- 
 tillant talk; she dazzles that one with the ele- 
 gancies of her person ; to another she is all deep 
 sympathy and tender feeling; of a fourth she 
 
2g8 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 inquires gravely, as if such subjects were the 
 one study of her hours, whether the experiments 
 in the liquefaction of carbon are progressing 
 hopefully, or who will be the next successful 
 candidate at the Academic. There is certainly 
 great labour in the process : the tension of the 
 mind is augmented by the longing for success, 
 and by unceasing attention to physical effect 
 as an essential aid to that success. But, to a 
 thorough woman of the world, conceive the 
 delights of success ! What must she feel when 
 her last visitor has left, when she looks back 
 over the four hours she has just passed, and 
 tells herself that every one has been conquered 
 by her, and has carried away a deep impression 
 of her charm ? The scene can be beheld in 
 Paris only, at least I have not discerned it 
 in the same perfection in any other society: 
 it is far away the most special picture of its 
 indoor life ; it shows the typical Frenchwoman 
 in her most finished development, which no one 
 else can attain. But how rare it is ! 
 
 At dinner her doings are equally complete, 
 but not the same. She is differently dressed. 
 She is "en peau" (I mention, for those who 
 may not be aware of it, that this is the modern 
 expression for decolletee) ; and with the change 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 2gg 
 
 of covering comes change of bearing, for the 
 perfect Paris woman has a bearing for every 
 gown. Just as the nature of the dress itself 
 indicates its purpose, its meaning, and the hour 
 at which it is to be worn, so does she herself 
 associate her ways with that meaning. The 
 movements of her bare shoulders and bare arms 
 at dinner are not identical with the movements 
 of the morning or the afternoon in a high cor- 
 sage and long sleeves. They have another story 
 to relate, another effect to produce, other duties 
 to discharge ; her measurement of their value 
 and their functions is quite different. The action 
 of the hands, again, is in full view; their lan- 
 guage can be spoken out ; their eloquence can 
 exercise its completest force ; she talks with 
 them as with her tongue. In pleased conscious- 
 ness of her delightfulness she sits in the centre 
 of her table, casts her glances and her words 
 around her, undulates with varied gesture, and 
 is again, in thorough meaning and result, the 
 typical Parisienne. 
 
 And yet, by one of the contradictions with 
 which the entire subject is piled up, she is 
 unable to bestow immortality on the memory 
 of her dinners. That memory disappears, for, 
 incomprehensible though it be, there is nothing 
 
3OO SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 which mankind in its thanklessness forgets like 
 dinners : there is nothing which in gratitude 
 we ought to remember more ; there is nothing 
 which in reality we remember less. This fact of 
 the utter fading away of dinners is a puzzle to all 
 people who have passed their lives in dining, 
 with full recognition of the superlative impor- 
 tance of the process. Scarcely any of them 
 recollect anything precise about the thousand 
 banquets at which they have rilled a place. 
 They agree, generally, that they have entirely 
 forgotten what they have eaten, that they have 
 almost forgotten what they have seen, that they 
 have the feeblest consciousness of the people 
 they have met, and that their only relatively 
 clear remembrance is of the bright talk they 
 have heard occasionally at table. The ear is 
 the only organ which retains really lasting im- 
 pressions ; the tongue preserves nothing, and 
 the eye scarcely anything. I believe that, with 
 the exception of a few professional gourmets (a 
 class that is becoming everywhere more and 
 more rare), this is the condition of mind of 
 nearly everybody who is in a position to form 
 an opinion on the subject. One of my acquain- 
 tances, who dined diversifiedly about Europe, 
 became so convinced in early life that dinners 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 3OI 
 
 are inevitably forgotten, that he preserved from 
 his outset the menus and lists of guests, with 
 the placing at table, of all the repasts at which 
 he assisted. When I saw his collection it had 
 grown into several folio volumes. The entries 
 in it were made with such precision, that, dis- 
 covering in it one of my own cards with a date 
 on it, and asking what it signified, I was told 
 by my acquaintance that its object was to regis- 
 ter the fact that he had dined with me alone 
 on the day indicated. He, at all events, had 
 succeeded in preventing himself from falling into 
 the universal oblivion : he considered, probably 
 with truth, that he was the only man in Euro- 
 pean society who was animated by the real 
 reconnaissance de I'estoniac, and who could recon- 
 stitute, with becoming thankfulness and cer- 
 tainty, the details of every dinner he had eaten. 
 At the actual moment of dinner we feel, of 
 course, a more or less keen perception of the 
 merits or demerits of the feast. But the per- 
 ception does not endure : even bad and gloomy 
 dinners are forgotten, just as thoroughly as 
 good and gay ones. The explanation is, it 
 seems to me, that we dine too often ; one din- 
 ner drives out the effect of another. If we had 
 only one dinner in our lives, how we should 
 
302 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 remember it ! Of the four great elements of 
 dinners food, people, spectacle, and talk the 
 talk alone, as I have already observed, dwells 
 on, in some degree, in our thoughts. No one 
 can fail to recognise that cookery is valueless 
 as a permanent cause of memory of dinners: 
 it has but a merely momentary effect ; it does 
 not merit the front place it is too commonly 
 supposed to occupy in the general constitution 
 of a repast ; it stands, on the contrary, last 
 in durability amongst the four constituents. 
 Scarcely any of the older students of dining 
 persist in giving serious thought to food, partly 
 because of weakening digestions, mainly because 
 they have learnt from long practice that the real 
 pleasure of a dinner is derived from another 
 source. They see in it not an occasion for 
 eating, but a most ingenious and soul-contenting 
 arrangement for bringing men and women in- 
 timately together under conditions which supply 
 many stimulants and brightnesses an arrange- 
 ment which enables them to show themselves 
 at their best, and which terminates the day 
 with lustre, like a luminous sunset. 
 
 Now, talk at dinner the one enduring ele- 
 ment of the ceremony ean never reach its 
 full radiance without women : and here comes 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 303 
 
 in the application of these considerations to 
 the Parisienne, for it is her talk which raises 
 dinner to the high place it occupies in Paris. 
 A womanless dinner may not be quite so dis- 
 mal as a night without stars, or a desert with- 
 out water ; but it may fairly be compared to a 
 tree without leaves, to a sea without ships, or 
 to a meadow without buttercups. Somewhere 
 in the sixties I dined with M. Emile de Girar- 
 din (I name him because he was a public man), 
 in that admirable house in the Rue Pauquet 
 which he called his "thatched hut." He was 
 famous for his dinners, and on the occasion 
 to which I refer the cookery was supreme 
 so supreme indeed that I told myself at the 
 time I had never partaken of such a dinner: 
 that shapeless fact is still in my memory; but 
 what there was to eat, or who was there, I 
 have utterly forgotten. I know only it was a 
 dinner of men that is to say, not a dinner 
 at all in the great social meaning of the term. 
 Women and talk alone make dinner, especially 
 in Paris, where the value of the women and 
 the talk reaches its highest possibilities. If 
 we forget all about it as soon as it is over, 
 that is not the fault of the Parisiennes ; they, 
 at all events, have done their utmost to induce 
 
304 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 us to remember. Certain Paris dinners pro- 
 vide, probably, a more complete supply of 
 social satisfaction than can be extracted from 
 any other single source. They give us what 
 we want at the moment in its best conceiv- 
 able form, with all the components and sur- 
 roundings that can furnish outside assistance. 
 Of course dinners are more or less alike every- 
 where ; of course the foundations and the 
 general nature of the structure reared upon 
 them cannot vary widely; but in the double 
 sensation of serenity and complacency on the 
 one hand, and of inspiring allurement on the 
 other, Paris possesses in a few houses an 
 atmosphere which cannot be breathed any- 
 where else, and which constitutes a true inter- 
 national distinction. 
 
 It is possible that, to the inexperienced eye, 
 the charm of this would not be as evident as 
 it becomes on intimate knowledge of it. We 
 like best what we are most accustomed to ; 
 strange ways rarely please us at first the 
 habit of them needs to be formed before we 
 can appreciate them. There is an involuntary 
 shrinking from the new and the unknown ; it 
 is only after time and usage that, in most 
 cases, we become fit to comprehend the merit 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 305 
 
 of practices that we were not brought up to 
 admire. But when habit has had opportunity 
 to grow, when experience has enabled us to 
 base our judgments on long comparison, then, 
 at last, we recognise excellences which do not 
 strike new - comers. I insist particularly on 
 this consideration, because it explains not only 
 the source of the opinions I hold, but also one 
 of the reasons why others may differ from 
 those opinions. 
 
 A Paris evening-party is nearly the same pro- 
 cess as a "day" in other clothes, and with 
 more facility for walking about. There is noth- 
 ing to be said of it that I have not said already. 
 I will, however, mention one recollection that 
 has a relation to its aspects. The first time 
 I was present at a ball in Paris, I was struck 
 by the singular freshness of the colours of the 
 dresses, after the tints I had known in England : 
 it was not the making of the dresses that I 
 noticed, but their shades, which had a bloom 
 that astonished me. I soon lost, from con- 
 stant view, the power of comparing; but at 
 first, before my eyes had become trained, it 
 seemed to me that even the whites were 
 whiter, brighter, more intense than any I had 
 seen before, while all the other hues looked 
 u 
 
306 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 more transparent and more living. I make 
 no attempt to explain the impression I re- 
 ceived, but of its reality I am certain. 
 Whether the distinction still endures I can- 
 not say (new arrivers alone could now judge 
 of that) ; but at the moment, while the sense 
 of it lasted, it served to mark a visible differ- 
 ence between the balls of Paris and of Lon- 
 don. In all else, save some few unimportant 
 contrasts of manners and of details, evening- 
 parties have seemed to me about the same 
 everywhere, and I can think of nothing about 
 them that is really proper to Paris. The 
 women exercise at them an attraction on the 
 people round which is more general and less 
 individual than at dinners : there is space ; 
 the spectators are far more numerous; the 
 women are more completely seen; but, all the 
 same, they dominate less. I have always 
 fancied that, for this reason, the true Paris 
 woman is somewhat wasted at an evening- 
 party ; she is too much in the crowd ; she 
 may be admired, but she does not always 
 rule. Her one advantage at night receptions 
 is that she can stand and walk about, and 
 can produce effects of motion which are 
 denied to her at dinner. 
 
INDOOR LIFE. 307 
 
 This sort of life in Paris is not, after all, 
 more worldly than the same existence is else- 
 where. Wherever amusement is lifted to the 
 position of the first object of existence, the 
 moral effect on those who pursue it is virtu- 
 ally the same : there may be shades of local 
 difference, but the tendency of the mind 
 grows everywhere alike. It would therefore 
 be unfair to attribute any special frivolity to 
 Paris because small sections of its society 
 achieve extreme brilliancy of worldliness ; 
 just as it would be unfair to praise it speci- 
 ally because other classes are particularly 
 worthy of esteem. In the universal average 
 of good and bad, Paris stands on the same 
 general level as other capitals; but in glisten- 
 ing pleasantness it rises, here and there, above 
 them all. The reason is that the higher Paris 
 women possess usually both intelligence and 
 elegance, the two qualities which society speci- 
 ally requires, which are rarely found together 
 elsewhere (at all events in the same proportions 
 and with the same effects), and the union of 
 which has won for the best examples of Paris- 
 iennes the world wide reputation they have 
 enjoyed. Their superiority still exists, but how 
 long it will continue to endure remains to be 
 
308 SOME MEMORIES OF PARIS. 
 
 seen : it is weakening fast from the progres- 
 sive disappearance of the women who, thus 
 far, have maintained it. If it does vanish 
 altogether, Paris will become like any other 
 place, with the same respectabilities and the 
 same dulnesses ; but its indoor life will have 
 left behind it a history and a memory proper 
 to itself, and some day, perhaps, its women will 
 wake up again and will reassume the feminine 
 graces, the feminine capacities, and, above all, 
 the true feminine intelligence which were so 
 delightfully distinctive of their mothers. 
 
 That they may recover fully those graces, 
 those capacities, and that intelligence, is one 
 of the earnest wishes I offer to a race amongst 
 which I no longer live, but to which I owe 
 many of the happinesses and most of the 
 brightnesses of my life, and towards which, 
 until my thoughts cease, I shall feel deep and 
 solidly founded gratitude. 
 
 THE END. 
 

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