CORRESPONDENCE.
AMONG THE RUINS OF PARIS.
[nom A. CORRESPONDENT.] SIR,-I had not been in Paris for three years. My last memory of it was the scene as I strolled from the Bois de Boulogne towards town on a midsummer afternoon in 1868. The long procession of splendid and fanciful equipages slowly rolled along the favourite road of fashion. The sky was blue and high, the sun was bright and not too strong, the air was to other air as champagne is to other wino. Beyond the tree-tops rose the turrets of churches, the,glittering roofs of palaces, the ever-fluttering flag. Paris to my eyes looked like a true earthly Paradise. I never thought I should live to see the most splendid quarter of it rather resemble the shell of a burnt-out Pandemonium. I met his Imperial Majesty walking arm-in-arm with a German prince, then on a visit to the capital of the grand nation and the universe. Napoleon III. wore his most august air, and plodded along, shaking the
sphere. None mobbed and not many saluted him. The Empress passed in a simple but very elegantly-appointed carriage. With a grand escort, in a state coach, with outriders and aides- de-camp, and a general to command it all, the Child of France at the fullest moment of the day appeared upon the scene. I observed as I passed the Palace on my way home that the wing which had been lately rebuilt was not in exact line and harmony with the older part of the Tuileries ; and I conjectured that it was within his Majesty's intentions to pull down and rebuild the whole of the old Court of the Bourbons.
My first impression of Paris when I arrived there at eleven o'clock on last Friday night was of an unusual dimness, dinginess, and somnolence of aspect. People had apparently very generally gone to bed, and gas had evidently got scarce. Such was the simple truth indeed. In crossing the Pont Neuf, I observed that only every second lamp was lit ; and it is a fact that the siege and much misery have taught the Parisians the propriety of early hours. I looked in vain along the route that my coachman was pleased to take for signs of the great desolation ; they were not to be seen. But when I reached my old quarters in the Faubourg St. Germain, I beheld the traces of recent building, and was led to another chamber than that I used to occupy, through which, indeed, a Prussian shell had passed last winter.
I spent next day among the ruins. The damage done is great, but by no means so great as I had imagined. I often used to think what a rare advantage it was to Paris to have those vast quarries so close to the valley of the Seine, but never could have fancied that the stout white stone would be put to the test of fire, and would bear it so well. If General Cluseret had fulfilled his inten- tion of burning Downing Street and Buckingham Palace with petroleum during the Fenian era (it was then, permit me to remind
you, that arson was first added to the armoury of the Revolution), what a heap of rubbish half Westminster and Pimlico would have been reduced tol Brick and mortar, lath and plaster, stucco and slates could only tumble together in a grand conglomerate of cinders. But the Paris palaces still stand, solid monuments of their own ruin. The floors burned, the iron melted, the roof fell in, but the white stone defied the fire. The skeleton stands bare and gaunt, but still all the bones are there. The walls must be calcined in many places, especially in upper stories; but to a very large extent they will, I should suppose, be found serviceable again. At the Tuileries the conflagration seems to have paused when it had burned the more ancient part of the Palace. The signs do not extend ou the side of the Rue de Rivoli beyond the line of railing that bounds the Place du Carrousel. The new wing fronting the river does not exhibit any appearance of damage. A very Imperialist friend gave me a memento of the force of the fire at the part of the Palace where the Empress's apartments were. It is a lump of artificial lava, of about four pounds' weight, in which many metals and many crystals, glass and brass, and perhaps gold and jewels, have been fused together. My friend, loyal to the last, regarded it as an omen that the fire paused when it burned out the house of the old line, and hoped that if not Napoleon III., then Napoleon IV. would perfect the Palace. But I confess I could only see the evidence that M. Haussmann knew how to make a palace fire-proof rather better than Philibert Delorme. Of the other palaces, from that of the Legion of Honour to that of Justice, the shells remain ; and generally, in somewhat safe con- dition. The ruin that, of all, seemed to me to be the most awful and hopeless is that of the Palace of the People, the Hotel de Ville. There powder had evidently aided petroleum, and the walls bore marks of blasting as well as fire. It has been stated, and will doubtless be repeated, that the burning of these buildings became at a certain stage of the defence a necessary, or at least a legitimate military measure on the part of the Commune. One could quite understand the burning or blasting of houses through which soldiers had made or were making their way, so as to fire down on the defenders of a particular barricade. The Rue de Lille seems to have suffered by this process, if I may judge from its condition, which is much worse than that of any other street I passed through. In the Rue des Saints Phres I saw a house which had been fired, happily with slight effect, in the rear of a barricade, but could not hear that any had been fired in front of it, yet it was on the roofs and upper stories of these houses in front that MacMahon's inen advanced. But the burning of the palaces and public buildings was mere sheer melodramatic and mischiev- ous arson ; they were not so placed as to arrest the advance of the troops by an hour. Indeed, there was evidently no such sincere and genuine fighting as that of the Reds in June, 1848. How could there be ? Men may burn and abandon a city as the Russians did at Moscow. But men will not set all that is grand- est and most sacred in a great city on fire and then fight for the ashes. The churches all escaped. It must be admitted it is not easy to burn a church. Theatres, on the other hand, burned like tinder. If I had had time I might have moralized over, not the ruins, but the rubbish of the Porte St. Martin, principal among those temples where the cult of lust, the habit of bounce, the hatred of order and the scorn of God, which have brought France so low, were so long preached. At the Madeleine I observed that in the intervals of the combat at the barricade below, the soldiers of the Commune appeared to have amused themselves by firing at the figures of our Lord and Mary Magdalene in Letnaire's fine alto- relievo. The columns were much chipped by bullets, but in only one case did the damage appear to be such as a cannon-ball would have caused. Cannon, where it was used, must have been laid with singular skill and care. There are no evidences extant now of its demolishing action. I was equally surprised and delighted to find that the Commune had spared the trees. Barri- cades were universally built of stone ; and so the Boulevards are still lined by their leafy sentinels. I could not hear that any exact estimates had yet been made of the amount of private property damaged, but having gone carefully through the most hotly con- tested quarters, I do not believe that more than a hundred private houses were actually burned out. Many, however, were burned partially or fired ineffectually. Saud, it seems, slakes petroleum, if promptly employed. The apartment of a friend of mine, actually partly inflamed, was perfectly saved in this way. In fine, much has been destroyed that never can be restored,—pictures, statues, archives. But as to buildings, with the exception of the 113tel de Ville, there seems to me to be no absolutely irreparable damage done. A year hence, I presume to predict, there will hardly be a trace of l'Empire Cluseret and its fiery exit left. The spirit of the Parisians is too evidently very miserable and poverty-stricken, but as capable of illusion and as hysterically excitable as ever. Poverty, I know, is a strange word to apply to a country that subscribes to such gigantic loans in such an exu- berant fashion, but I do not speak of the country, I speak of Paris ; and Paris is, comparatively with its aucieut aspect, very poverty- stricken. One dines in the empty rooms of famous restaurants. One is offered marvellous bargains in once fashionable shops. It is somewhat terrible to talk to a manufacturer of articles de Paris. His trade is dull, partly for lack of demand, but also, he tells you, so many of his workmen have been shot, so many await trial at Versailles, so many have fled. The most ingenious and skilful of the Paris workmen seem to have given themselves body and soul to the Commune. The print shops are always a gauge of the temper of Paris ; and in the print shops, obscenities and horrors were presented in about equal proportions. A sketch of the exe- cution of the Archbishop and a panorama of Paris on fire stand side by side with a fresh study of Leda or some other filthy novelty of art. Battle scenes used to occupy a prominent place ; but there are no battles worth exhibition now. I often saw, not without wonder, the ignominies of Prussian occupation illustrated,—the conquerors eating and drinking of the best, while the peasant and his family cower in the corner. The present rulers of France did not seem to me to be depicted as if the public could possibly care to purchase their portraits, but lay there mixed up hocus-pocus with newspaper writers, opera dancers, and Giunbetta's generals ; nor were the various pretenders displayed as popular favourites are wont to be. The photographs of the Count de Chambord, how- ever, seemed to me to me to be in the ascendant in point of size and number,—so also were those of the Countess de Paris. I saw none of the Countess de Chambord ; and the Count de Paris was ap- parently kept in the back-ground. The Dukes were nowhere. I do not pretend that these signs are even straws that show a current. The spirit of Paris seemed to me to be simply sick, but• not sick enough to be sorry. I hardly spoke to one Parisian proper who did not deal in the same indiscriminate abuse of Napoleon, Trochu, Gambetta, Thiers ; they had been betrayed and sold on all hands. If they had not been betrayed and sold, they must have beaten the Prussians ten times over. The idea that the terror and the fasci- tion exercised by the populace of Paris over the Government of the country had paralyzed or at least misdirected its energies seemed to have crossed no man's mind. Recollecting the odium which General Cavaignac incurred for the severity with which he suppressed the Reds in June, 1848, I was curious to learn whether MacMahon's popularity had outlived the far more ruthless massacre necessary for the conquest of the Commune. Notwith- standing indiscriminate pistolling of petroleases and summary executions on a scale unparalleled, MaclVIalion is the most popular soldier and I believe the most popular person in France. I don't know why it should be so, save that he renounces all political ambition, and appears to act merely from the motive of duty as absolutely as did the Duke of Wellington. The Army, as is the way with armies, is said to have caught somewhat of the spirit of its commander. I was more than once affected by the altered bearing of the French soldier. The old gay and rather loose strut is a good deal gone. He looks subdued, but not the less manly. I heard on all hands that the spirit of Chauoinisme is much exor- cised from the Army, though still so strong in the populace, and even in the Assembly. But I also heard, and I believe, that by far the strongest sentiment in the Army is the Bonapartist ; also, that the French Army is, as all armies in these latter days tend to become, more religious than it used to be—there seems to be some occult relation between arias of precision and austerity of life. If MacMahon were disposed to play the part of Monk in a Bonapartist restoration, I heard Bonapartists boast, and bitter enemies of the Empire sorrowfully admit, he would have next to no difficulty. But the Bonapartists frankly admitted that they could not count on the Marshal. It is an inestimable advantage to France at the present moment that there is at the head of the Army a soldier who is truly and thoroughly the servant of the civil power, else its constitution might easily fall into the state of that of Spain, and become an affair of military pronunciandentos. By far the most important question in France, in a civil and interior sense, at present and for some time to come, is the temper and constitution of the Army.
I am told on good authority that M. Thiers' health is rapidly giving way. Within the last month it seems the prolonged strain an his system had begun to tell, and his friends note with anxiety his livid aspect and his restless nervousness. What else can be expected in the case of a man of seventy-four years of age after twenty years of retirement suddenly summoned to the control of
a country in such a state as France was and is ? How long can he be expected to endure such a weight and such a strain ? When I asked what would happen and who was coining, I was told by some, "M. Gambetta," and by many, "M. Gravy." But M. Gambetta could hardly come, it seems to me, with the present Assembly, or with any now likely to be elected in France,—that is to say, without another Revolution ; and at that point he must count with MacIVIabon and the Army. M. Grevy, on the other hand, would be the choice of the Assembly—why, I really could not ascertain—except that, like our much-advertised Griffith, " he is the safe man," or so supposed to be. He is not certainly known to be a statesman, or an organizer, or an administrator, or a diplo- matist, or an orator, and France just now wants each and all of these talents at its head. Among strong Catholics, the present Government is quite as much detested as the Emperor's was. True, M. Thiers has given office to several of the leading politi- cians of the Liberal Catholic school. He has made the Duo de Broglie an ambassador and M. Cochin a prefect, both men of many talents, carefully accomplished—both, I will venture to say, statesmen. He has carefully placed such 'nen in offices where they have no real power. But what must the Catholics of France feel at his rotainiug such a man as M. Jules Simon in the office of Public Instruction and Worship ? They feel as the Church of England would if Professor Huxley were entrusted with the conduct of its relations with the State. Still they support and will support the present Government, so long as it can contrive to bold together, and they look not without awe to its not very remote end. I met with no one who dared to hope that France would again settle down without more war, and without more civil war. It is pitiable to hear people speak in this way as of a. terror in the air, over which they hare no more control than over storm or pestilence, when but for their own passioue and bad principles they might be the happiest nation on the face of the earth. I have said nothing of projects of other restorations than the Napoleonic. The reason is that I heard so little said on the subject. When I asked how the Orleans Princes were esteemed, I was told that they are highly esteemed ; that at first, in the exu- berance of their delight at returning, they made themselves to familiar with all comers, and that this was not wise ; and that now they are generally regarded, in Louis the Eighteenth's words, as several Frenchmen the more added to the resident population, and nothing more. The sons of the Citizen King are,in fact, welcomed as so many royal citizens, and that is all. It is not so easy to indicate. the regard which is entertained towards the Count de Chambord, which is more than respect, and yet less than loyalty. I found, however, a growing belief among even men of his party that he
does not really wish to be king, and that the passage about the white flag in his last manifesto was intended to be accepted as a.
virtual abdication. It seems for the present, at least, to have had
that effect ; but the present tense passes fast in France. M. Thiers is the man of the hour and the situation, and is so allowed
to reign with the forms of a Republic more absolutely and person- ally than did Louis Napoleon ; but an fond France is Monarchical, not Republican, and the one possible monarchy, it still seems to me, is that of Henry V.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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