CORRESPONDENCE.
VIEWS OF PARIS. aeon s CORRESPONDENT.] ON our way to an obscure watering-place in the east of France, we are making a short stay in Paris, just at the time when "everybody" is going away, declaring the heat intolerable, the sun unendurable, and things in general unbearable. But we like the heat and the sunshine, and we are poking about, as busy and as eager as the chiffonnier we came upon this morning, when only he and his confreres and ourselves were abroad, turning over a choice little bundle of rubbish with his crook, and grinning so as to suggest a ring or a silver spoon at least among the debris. We are somewhat in the same line, for we too are interested in the rubbish of all that we admired so much, and remember so well, in its beauty and splendour and completeness—for we were here, last, just after the Emperor had ceded the pouvoir ptrsonnel, and M. 011ivier had gaily and jauntily assumed the reins of that equipage of State which went down-hill with such terrific velocity, and to smash at the bottom just thirteen months later. Our last recol- lection of Paris was on the Emperor's fête, August 15, 1869,— grand dinners, grand receptions everywhere, all the Ministeres illuminated, all the great personages entertaining everybody, splendid fireworks, the Champs Elysees sparkling like a fairyland, covered with millions of glowworms on parade, the streets full of endimandes, flags fluttering from every post and balcouy, eagles and "N.'s" everywhere, gorgeous uniforms swarming about, church bells ringing, salvos of artillery mingling with stirring martial music (but no permission as yet for the " Marseillaise "), and a magnificent High Mass and Te Deum at Notre Dame, attended by the whole corps diplomatique, Monseigneur Darboy offici- ating, and the place kept by the superb cavalry of the Imperial Guard. How the long-tailed, black-eyed, grey Arabs danced and pranced, and rattled their curbs, and swung their dangling downs ; how the swords clinked, and the corslets glittered ; how merry and pleased the crowd was, and how exultant, grand, and solemn was the swell of the music which praised God and acknowledged Him to be the Lord ! With a very distinct picture of Paris on that day in our minds, we are investigating the ruins, concerning whose real nature and extent we have received curiously conflicting assurances, being told, on the one hand, that they are awful, terrible, desolating, and that no stranger can figure to himself how severely Paris has suffered; and on the other, that there was not much harm done, that the reparations are nearly complete, and that the gens des journaux (who are usually mentioned with impartial contempt), have given loose to their imagination in order to expose the country to the disdainful com- passion of the envious. Yes, there are people in Paris who think we envy them, even now, and they are consoled and happy. There are also people in Paris, not Communists and not uneducated, who will whisper gravely that the Conseil d'Etat (meaning the palace of the Council) was burned in the interests of the Empire, in order to destroy the papiers compromettants, and to prevent the accounts of the Imperial expenditure being brought to light. One lady, assiduously desirous that our visit should be productive of as much pleasure as possible, " engaged " us to choose a moonlight evening for our general inspection, assuring 'us that "tout cela eat ravissant an clair de la lune."
We have not seen tout eels by moonlight, but it is quite sufficiently ghastly in broad day, when, seen from the Place de la Concorde, pieces of the cloudless deep blue sky set themselves in the vacant window-frames of the Tuileries, and the thin facade of wall, and scattered scraps of chimneys still standing, look like sheets of painted pasteboard, held up by the heavy mass of the pavilions at either end. We cross the Place de la Concorde, where they are restoring the demolished fountain, and where the colossal figures which represent Lille and Strasbourg hide their broken heads during repair in wooden houses constructed upon their pedestals, (one blackened wreath hangs at the aide of Strasbourg still), and we pass into the gardens of the Tuileries. The statues are broken, and one solid marble pedestal is split completely in two ; the bor- ders are not so trim, the walks are not so well kept as formerly, but the flower-beds are full of roses, heliotropes, geraniums, and carnations ; thin streams of water from the garden arrosoirs are playing over their margins of ground ivy, and it is difficult to be- lieve that so lately they were trodden under the feet of furious crowds, pressing to their work of destruction. Many children, beautifully dressed, are playing in the elides, while their bonnets are knitting and gossiping ; the inevitable poodles are there, and really one does not wonder they should cock their tufty tails so jauntily, and rejoice in turning out in their pink skins in such weather. Here comes a dyer's dog, out for a walk with a commis of the establishment of tinting ; he walks gravely, impressed with a sense of his dignity, while the poodles au naturel regard his blue paws, his pink stomach, his green back and ears, and his magenta tail with dubious surprise ; as if they were saying (in French), " We are Tom Tinker's dogs,—whose dog are you?" Close by one of the thickly-leaved charmilks a group of people, whom we join, is collected to watch the old gentleman who has come every day for years, whose number no two persona are agreed upon, to feed the birds in the Tuileries gardens. He is indifferent to revolutions, he took no notice of the Prussian siege, and he regarded the Commune with indiffer- ence. There was always a bit of bread, always a handful of grain for his birds ; the fires did not singe their wings, the cannon did not deafen them to his voice. It was such a pretty sight to see the feathered tribe fluttering round his hat, obedient to his low, varied whistle, perching on his shoulders, whirling round his waving hand, pecking at his fingers, gathering the food from his lips, bopping round him, following him from alley to alley, and dispersing when he gravely bade them adieu. We turned reluc- tantly to the ruins, where "Respect it la propriete " is scrawled in derisive chalk upon the most utterly demolished portion,—whose blackened branches of once splendid girandoles protrude gauntly from the smoked walls,—where the lying legend " Honneur et patrie" is yet to be traced upon the scroll-work of the Salle des Marechaux (the central ward of the ambulance last year), amid the tarnished bay wreaths and the battered eagles—where the slid- ing floor on which the toilettes of the Empress used to be lowered to her dressing-room from the ateliers of all the frippery which was so severely judged when it ceased to be sternly exacted, yet remains, its machinery visible to the vulgar gaze,—and where the escalier d'honneur, at whose foot her Imperial Majesty was wont to receive her royal guests, is still complete. And all the ghosts since the days of Catherine de Medicis went by us, in the bright summer air, largely reinforced since the days of the Terrasse des Fenillants and the massacre of the Swiss Guards of Louis Seize. The restorations are only external in the case of the pavilions ; the walla are built up into a resemblance of solidity, and there is a roof of tarred planks and tarpaulin, put up, no doubt, that the "others" of the actual situation may not be too much "encouraged;" but the centre is empty. Grass is growing in the Cour d'Honneur, and a man, in a costume semi-military, but entirely dirty, is asleep on a bench at the entrance. We pass by the Louvre, and looking across the river, think there is not much change visible, and so on to the Hotel de Vile, where the ruin is more complete and deso- late than we had pictured it to ourselves, for across the heaps of rubbish, athwart the scaffolding, and through the scorched, ruinous walls and window-gaps, we catch glimpses of splendid ceilings, and now and then of a bit of fine Gothic ornamentation, solitary in the vast expanse of destruction. Hall after hall, gallery above gallery, with faint suggestions of the riches that have perished, lie open to the unsparing sunshine, and while we are studying the ruins swift birds are flying through the cavernous gaps, as a short cut to the trees beyond. We are conscious in this neighbourhood that our commiserating scrutiny is not regarded with favour ; there are ill-looking people about Who scowl at us as if they would ask us how we, foreigners, dare to object to the demolition of these ancient monuments of tyranny, and a friend tells us there is a song much in vogue among the Parisian peuple which recounts the glories of the Monnmens de Paris read backwards, and is an eloquent and horrifying Devil's litany. There are two indifferent subjects on the trottoir just here, who look as if they could sing it with very appropriate action. So we cross one of the bridges, and go along the opposite side of the quay, and then, indeed, we see the devastation in its true extent, and marvel how the Sainte Chapelle escaped destruction, for even the rapid rate at which the reparations are progressing cannot hide the hideous havoc of the Palais de Justice ; and the gilding of the beautiful roof, and the graceful fleche which used to shine like that of the Hotel des Invalides or the column of July, is much dimmed. So, along the line of splendid buildings, many of them mere empty shells, to the Rue de Lille, where the monceaux of stones, the heaps of dust and debris, remind us of the Haussmann period, which perhaps accustomed the Parisian populace to live among demoli- tions, and deprived them of impressiveness. What became of the superb furniture contained in these Ministeres, and in the hotels which were destroyed? Who can tell ? Many people told us the houses were pillaged before they were burned, and that their mobiliers were scattered among the free, equal, and fraternal Com- munists. But this did not sound like truth, and is inconsistent with the suddenness and desperation which actuated these fires, on the advance of the troops from Versailles. An eye-witness told us the most curious sight of all was the burning of the Cour des Comptes, when thousands of sheets of black and blazing paper fell like showers from a volcano into the streets at a considerable distance round. One detail of those dreadful days was simply given us by a nun, whose convent is close to the Boulevard St. Jacques. Two da s after the Versailles troops entered Paris, she went out to carry food and medicine to a poor family on the other aide of the Boulevard, and she passed by a great heap of torn and dirty garments, tied into a bundle with a rope, and flung into the street to be burned. They were the clothes of the people who had been shot in that place, and among the horrid, blood-stained mass she saw several silk gowns and the sleeve of a velvet mantle.
From the Rue de Lille we went to the Rue de Leona, to the church of the Jesuits, reminding each other, on the way, that when in 1869 we had visited the Missions Etrangeres, the scene of the massacre of the Carmes, the last supper of the Girondins, and theim- prisonment of Josephine de Beauharnais,—we had said, as we stood beside the neatly arranged and ticketed ranges of skulls in the crypt, it was impossible such deeds could ever be done again, and almost incredible that they ever had happened. One of the peres was preaching to a very large and profoundly attentive congregation, preaching with pleasant gestures and a smiling countenance. And we found ourselves just beyond the church door, in front of a large side chapel, on whose marble floor lay piles of wreaths, some of fresh roses, snow-white and blood-red, some of amaranths, some of artificial memorial flowers. Several women in deep mourning knelt before the altar rails, within which are set five slabs of black marble, with inscriptions in gold letters, which record how the five Jesuit priests whose remains, recovered from the pit into which they were thrown, rest below,
sealed their faith with their blood in the time of the Commune. We leave the church, and go upstairs, past a large room contain- ing photographs of the Jesuit missionaries murdered in China, in
Cores, in Japan, in Mexico, at all the ends of the earth (but, says a French lady with us, "eels. se comprend ; ce n'est pas Is France, ce n'est pas Paris, ce n'est pas devant Pennemi stir notre sol"), to an upper story, and into a room which has the appear- ance of a prison, with a large press, with glazed doors at one end. In this room are five rough little tables, and five wooden chairs, chained to the tables, five stretcher beds, looped up
to the wall, and five leaden cans, each bearing a number on the lid. It is the prison furniture which WSA used
by the five martyrs, and which their brethren purchased at the cost of replacing them by similar articles. Behind the glazed doors of the press are their soutanes, riddled with bullet-holes, their shoes and shirts, handkerchiefs dipped in their blood, the ropes by which their mutilated remains were hoisted out of the pits, scraps of their writing, their leaden drinking-cups, and a little common lozenge-box, in which the bread of life was conveyed to them, before they were summoned to receive their reward. In the centre is a large leathern-bound book, the leaves half-burnt.
It is the breviary of Pere Olivaint, which he brought out with him, on his way to death, and gave to a woman in the crowd. One of the murderers snatched it from her and flung it into a fire, but the woman rescued it at the double peril of her life, and restored it to the Jesuits. This is a very curious and suggestive scene, especially one feature of it, which we affect not to compre- hend. On the wall opposite the press is a glazed case, containing five crosses of red cloth and five numbers. We point to this, and ask a stolid-looking woman what it means ? " Ah, mon Dieu! does not Madame know ? They are the red crosses of the ambulance." "Indeed I Then these priests who were shot served in the ambulance." "Alt, mon Dieu! yes, they were of all the sorties, the unhappy ones and they served the wounded and the sick, both of the troops and the people, day and night ; that gave courage to us others in the evil days." So we look from the case of the red crosses to the case of the Jesuit soutanes once more, and go away. But happening to mention this circumstance to a friend that evening, she told us that a young girl who had seen the worst sights of the times told her how the crowd had roared with delight when it was said the Archbishop of Paris had suffered so much from hunger in his prison that some of his fellow - martyrs feared his courage might fail from mere bodily weak- ness, and that one of the mob, a woman, cried out, little knowing what a truth she uttered, "Taut mieux pour lui, son Christ 0 lid, a eu faim aussi, n'est ce pas ? "—a sally which had an immense success. Later, we drove back through the centre of Paris to the Parc Monceaux, and out to the Bois, stopping our carriage to observe the children at play and the women at needle- work in the pretty, perfectly restored little garden which sur- rounds the tower of St. Jacques, where there were such fighting and such killing as might give it a double claim to its familiar quali- fication, de la Boucherie. How gay and pretty the little park looked, and how well the fosses are disguised in greenery ! No one knows exactly where it was the dead were fourris, and it is only important to know that they were all disinterred. In spite of incredibly rapid reparations, the Avenue de Neuilly and the dusty expanse of waste land on which the little chapel which marks the spot where the Duke of Orleans met with his fatal accident is still standing, surrounded with a rough palisade, are melancholy spectacles : and the wantonly wasted Bois is sad to see. But everybody was there, as in the old days before the deluge, and
duel had taken place in an alley of predilection only that morn- ing, and souvenirs of the two sieges may be bought there as 'readily as mock relics of the great fight at Waterloo. It becomes very confusing after a while, and one feels almost forced to take it All as easily as the people of all classes seem to be taking it, —the people, who all tell you the same thing, that it is not *finished yet, that they do not know exactly what they expect or what they want, but that they are sure something is going to happen. A few days ago, it was a complot, a coup ditat, the Nain-ggant was going to banish Marshal MacMahon, who was supposed to be waiting to restore something or somebody. But that blew over,—did not the Marshal and his wife visit Monsieur and Madame Thiers, in the friendliest way ?—there was .nothing in it. But Figaro was delightfully funny about it, and charmingly eloquent too, and if there does exist any such thing in France as genuine admiration, real enthusiasm for an individual, it is for " l'illustre vaincu de Froischwiller." You recollect that it was said that James II. was sung out of three kingdoms by "Lillibullero," a refrain whereof no man knows the meaning to 'this day. A somewhat similar conceit has struck Alphonse Karr, who is exceedingly facetious about the popular airs to which each successive dynasty in France has been shown out. It declares that popular air is now required to express the political attitude of M. Thiers, —" a wise equilibrium, the fusion of parties, of ideas, ac.," which shall be the sacred hymn of " l'essai loyal de la Repub- .lique sans Republicains," and that no stability or public confidence is to be expected until such an air shall have received the appro- bation of the gamins. In the meantime, we are going to Versailles ,to witness a seance of the Assembly in the theatre, where once on It time the Grand Monarque played the double roles of jeune premier and stage manager. And we hope the sitting may be a
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