GOSSIP FROM AND ABOUT FRANCE.
[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]
May 15th, 1863. FOREMOST in the rank of Ide'es Napoleoniennes stands the dread of every idea. The first Napoleon boasted that he had delivered France from the horrible incubus of ideologues ; the third main- tained that the coup d'etat had put an end to the reign of barristers and journalists, and now his mouthpiece, M. Fiala, dit Persigny, exults in the fact that "the chosen of the people" has saved that poor country from "the anarchy, the misery, and the degradation" to which the r6jime des rhe'teurs had reduced it. The poor ide'ologues, avocatl,etrheteurs are such convenient scapegoats— why should they not be made to answer for all the sins committed by the nobility and the clergy, by Louis XVI., Charles X., and Louis Philippe ? "It is Voltaire's and Rousseau's fault," said the Ultra-royalists under the Bourbons, whenever anything faltered and went wrong. Thinkers are disturbers of society, religion, order, morality, and God knows what not ! Soldiers, stockjobbers, and petty officials, on the contrary, are immaculate men, who have the true interests of mankind at heart. Therefore the second empire takes them to its bosom, and recommends them warmly to the electors of France.
M. Fialin's horror of parties goes so far that he will be at last obliged to act like the village priest in France, who depicted the inferior regions to his amazed parishioners in the most gloomy colours. He grew so pathetic, and found his imagination so fertile in horrible delineations, that his hearers became amazingly terrified, and he felt himself so deeply moved by his own sermon and his awful description, that he finished his oration with the deprecatory words, "Now, you must not consider all this as being literally true, for I hope I may have exaggerated a little." How many speakers in our days, if they were as sincere as this poor, simple- hearted priest, would have to exclaim, "Pater, peccavi," and plead guilty to the charge of exaggeration !
M. Fialin likewise maintains that the second empire has, in the course of a few years, raised France "to the highest point of great- ness and wealth."
Well! during the single month of April there were 112 bank- ruptcies registered at the Tribunal de Commerce of Paris alone. We wonder whether that is an indication of commercial prosperity ? "The Charter will henceforth become a truth," said Louis Philippe, in 1830, and the world is aware in what manner he qualified this truth in later years. There shall be true liberty at the elections, says M. Persigny ; but it is true only for the Government candi- dates; for while the independents scarcely find in the provinces a newspaper bold enough to publish their names, the prgets com- pel, by a convenient communique, the Liberal journals to insert the pretensions of the Minister's protege's. Still, there is a choice left to the electors, as La France piously ejaculates, "Between candidates of equal devotion, whenever their rivalry cannot profit to an enemy of the empire, the electors may, without any fear, select the one in whcm they have the greater confidence." Grand merci Bonapartist legality is of so elastic a nature that it may be stretched to any degree. For instance, the law states that a printed work can only be seized after it is published, since the publication alone constitutes the offence. Knowing that M. Eugene Pelletan was going to issue a pamphlet on the elections under the title, " Aide-toi le Ciel t'aidera," the police went to the printing-office of M. Claye, where they learned that not a single copy had as yet been struck off. Sorely vexed, but little puzzled, the commissaire de police simply required the workmen to print in his presence 2,500 copies, which he carried triumphantly away. That man is worthy of promotion, and is sure to get it. This is the second instance of an" Administrative seizure ; " the first happened to the "History of the House of Conde," by the Duke d'Aumale. A law- suit has been brought before the civil tribunals on account, of the latter work, but the trial has again been put back for a week.
C'est du Nord auj9urd'hui que noes vient—la danseuse. After Petipa the graceful, Zina Richard the light-footed, Stoikoff the velvet-eyed brunette, the flaxen-haired Mouravief has made her debiit at the French Opera, in presence of the Emperor, the Empress, the high dignitaries of the Court, and every enthusiastic Slavonian dwelling in the French capital. The young Russian dancer, uho is the great topic of conversation, does not seem to be very pretty. But a magniloquent brother feuilktonist describes her as "having the gentle whiteness of the snow which melts in the April sun, on the high roofs of the perspective Newski," whatever that may mean. She is, moreover, rather short, lank, and lean ; "but," says her fanatic admirer, "her legs announce vigour, and almost male vigour." Well, that is an attraction, especially as Mademoiselle Mouravief dances with a military precision sug- gestive of Russian drill and Russian officers.
The last ball of the season has taken place at the Tuileries, and, probably to mark her regret, the Empress appeared without any ornamental appendage to her head dress. But the Countess Castiglione, who, for some reasons in which millinery and politics have an equal share, is generally the observed of all observers, was splendid and dazzling. Allow me, for the information of your fair readers, to mention that her hair was curled up and decked with natural flowers, that her dress was white, and that she wore a cross-belt of lace from the right shoulder to the left hip. She was decidedly prettier in this fanciful attire than in the sombre cos- tume of a Carmelite nun, in which she lately appeared at the tableaux vivants produced at the Hotel Meyendorf.
Another lioness, Madame Korsakow, was absent, being occupied in correcting the proof sheets of her book, "A Winter in Paris," in company with Theophik Gautier, who, by the way, has just been degraded by M. Walewski, who bestows on him a pension of 3,000 francs. Pro/ pudor I To possess one of the most vivid pens of contemporary literature and to become literary pensioner !
Having begun to speak of fashion, I may as well add that those valuable lady-improvers, whom your old Guardian called "cephalic operators," have formed an academy in Paris. They have lately come to the decision that all elegant dames ought to wear the hair in the form of a cortogan descending to the waist, bound in the middle with pink, blue, and green ribbons, and curled at the extremity in five of those long curls which we call " cork- screws " in France. It may look pretty enough ; but how can those ladies who are not blessed with an abundant hirsute crop manage the matter ? Let me also whisper, as in duty bound, that hoops are worn in two ways ; some are round, others oblong. Some dancing belles present to the admiring gaze a perfect circle, a geometrical figure which the ancients regarded as the ideal of beauty. Others seem to walk beside their dress, and suggest the impertinent question which Beau Brummel once put to a noble but ridiculous Duke, "Do you call this thing a coat?" I am not bold enough to decide whether walking balloons look better than nimble- footed ladies adorned in Nature's beauty alone ; but why not somewhat restrain the dimensions within reasonable bounds? Est modes in rebus, even in hoops. Why then should we not apply to dear-loved and dear-bought crinoline what the French proverb even pretends of virtue?
"Fact de la vertu, pas trop n'en faut : L'exces en tout est un dVaut." A GAUL.
Previous page
