CORRESPONDENCE.
A LETTER FROM PARLS.—II.
[By A. SUPERFICIAL OBSERVER.] IT has probably been the lot of most householders in London personally to conduct visitors from the provinces through the dazzling halls wherein Madame Tussaud's waxen effigies illustrate human nature with cosmopolitan impartiality, and i most instances those householders have probably been compensated by the surprising remarks of the tourists. I remember a case in point. It occurred long before the "Portrait Model" period, and when Mrs. Manning was among the latest novelties in the Chamber of Horrors. I had done the Kings and Queens and the Napoleon Room with much credit to myself and satisfac- tion to my companion, a worthy lady from Devonshire, who regarded the waxworks with admiration only, equalled by that with which they were recently honoured by the Shah, and having reached the Chamber of Horrors, I left her for a while to her emotions undisturbed, and indulged myself in a gentle reverie. I was roused by a puzzled muttering, and found myself in the cheerful vicinity of Marat My friend was gazing at the odious spectacle, and I caught the sounds of her soliloquy. "What ails him? Fits, perhaps. That can't be currant-jelly,—in a bath but it looks like it." Recalled to a sense of my duty, I briefly related that tragical story which possesses one admirable narrative quality ; you can cook it to the taste of your hearer, serving your Charlotte Corday " accommodated " with a Joan-of-Arc flavour, or otherwise, just as he or she may fancy. My friend was a peaceful provincial, so I shocked her with Charlotte,—not exactly as I intended though, for she turned surprised eyes upon me, and observed, in a horrified voice, "You really mean that she killed the poor gentleman in his bath I What a bold young woman ! " From that day forth a comic association with the idea of Marat—previously incredible—has always existed for me, and it was recalled to my memory a few days ago by another odd example of the variety of points of view. Supposing Mrs. Nickleby to have been in Paris as a superficial observer, she would probably have been reminded of the Rue de la Ferraillerie, by the fact that the Dim de Nemours, having shaved off his beard, no longer presents his former striking resemblance to Henri Quatre. Figaro told us so one morning, at least, and I instantly began to wonder what had become of the narrow street and the old house, with the little figure of the Bearnais outside, where that stout-hearted, unscrupulous personage breathed his last, in a room which I had gazed upon with much awe many years ago, having gone thither direct from Fontainebleau, where I had feasted my eyes upon the historic rooms in the palace, upon Sully's Pavilion, and the house of /a belle Gabrielle. (I like now to persuade myself that I believed then in the famous carp, and actually beheld the patriarchical fish with the collar of gold which he won from the proud monarch.) They told me in that good old time that the narrow room was precisely in the same state, and con- tained the same furniture as when Henri Quatre was carried into it, and I hope I had not a doubt of the truth of the statement, for never more can I make act of faith in it. The Rue de Is Ferraillerie is gone, swept away in the base interests of modern convenience, and now that the Palace of St. Cloud is burned, so that you cannot see the room in which Jacques Clement stabbed Henri Trois, there is only one spot in or near Paris to be con- fidently associated with the killing of a king. I was accompanied by a small Parisian friend, aged twelve, in my vain search for the Rue de in Ferraillerie, and as she was rather curious as to the object of the expedition, I told her the story of Henri Quatre, of his great reign and tragicideath, and as I could not show her the street, tried to describe it as it was,—narrow and inconvenient, with 811 the accessories of the clumsy coach and the fanatical assassin. Henry did not interest this young person,—Ravaillac did, which I observed with misgiving. "It was an awful crime," I said, solemnly, "and we must hope the man was mad." She answered readily, " Oui, c'etait tres-bête," and I desisted from historical reminiscences, bethinking me of Marat and the bath, and the points of view of my provincial and my Parisian. Yes ; the street has disappeared, but in searching for it I disinterred one souvenir of Henri Quatre, agreeably combined with Alexander Dumas. I found myself in a narrow, gloomy, cold little street, full of the queer small industries which abound in Paris,—a street of dim windows and dark doorways, but with cats asleep in the former, or contemplating the busy world from the latter, who would make the Crystal Palace " prizes " and the Birmingham " pets " look small indeed,—and having stopped to cultivate the acquaintance of a superb Angora, beautiful but bored, I dis- covered that I was in the Rue Tiquetonne. I wish one of the people who know almost everything, and apply themselves to learning the rest, would tell me what is the origin of that name. I fancy—but it is only fancy, it may have reference to the buzzing of insects in the adjacent Hanes—the etymology favours the notion. At all events, there it is still, the old street with the old name, in which Marie Touchet lived in the old house where Charles IX. carved the anagram he made out of her name (" Je charme tout") on an oak panel ; the old street where the Bearnais kept watch for his genial brother-in-law, and was nearly caught by Queen Catharine's spies because he would persist in exclaiming "Ventre-saint-gris !" Judging from my own experience, I have no doubt that unmeaning but characteristic expletive was forced from the King of Navarre by the exceeding fierceness of the gritty wind which comes round both corners of the street at once, and which nothing but his own statue, in its bold bronze as it appears on the Pont Neuf, could meet quite unmoved.
On emerging from the dim little Rue Tiquetonne into the broad Rue-aux-Ours, with its reminiscences of the popular sports of a time when cruelty was less scientific than it is at present, and its vista of the busy, bustling Holies, one comes upon a scene of demolition which gives one a glimpse of antiquity compared with which Henri Quatre, or indeed Henri Cinq, is recent. Amid a desolate waste of old walls, and bits of half-demolished rooms with the old wall-paper still clinging to them, and the long, snaky lines of smoke which once ascended from the now extinct family hearths—those peculiarly cruel marks of change, which seem to have been drawn by Time's own ironical fingers— within a wooden enclosure covered with flaunting advertisements —the Grand Ball at the Grand Opera, the cheap clothing at the Bon Petit Diable, the health-preserving " Revalesciere," in which I own I did not at first recognise the Revalenta of Arabia and our own native grocers—stands a beautiful, wonderfully old tower, with roof whose red is nearly grey, and whose walls are yellowed and almost softened by time. It has been laid bare by the "demolitions," and it is a strangely perfect relic of the old palace of the Dukes of Burgundy, the fortress home of Jean sans pear. Mean houses have clustered about it and choked it for centuries, just as theyliave grown up about many a beautiful old church ; but they have aided in preserving it also, and it is a great prize for the City of Paris, which is going to isolate and beautify it with a " square " of garden and railing, like that which surrounds the matchless tower which alone remains of the once vast and famous Church of St. Jacques de is Boucherie, with its wealthy and powerful confraternity of the "Merchants of the Mouth," and its privileged prison, For l'Eveqiie. It will be a pleasant place to come to when all this is done, and the bonnes and the babies have taken possession. The Halles had always a strong attraction for me, and since I saw them last, the Dames have distinguished themselves by their courageous action during the Commune, when they marched to the prison and demanded back their own cure—the Cure of St. Eustaehe- and got him, as these fierce women have a traditional way of getting what they make up their minds to have, whether it be bread, or blood, or justice, the head of a queen, or the safety of a priest who gives all his life and its soultwearing labour for them, as their cure has long given them. They are strange to see and to hear, and I prefer to seem to be observing their merchandise rather than themselves ; but they are astonishingly active, and very tender to the troops of little children about the place.
Have you ever observed that, next to inducing your friends to. adopt your favourite remedy for rheumatism, your special read- ing-lamp, the homceopathic system of medicine, your theory of spiritualism, or your infallible method of making up a comfortable• fire, warranted to last through the longest evening, you have the greatest difficulty in persuading them to go and see a panorama of anything? I was almost unpersuadable about the Panorama of the Defence of Paris, in the Champs Elysees, myself, but since I went, rather sulkily, to see it, and recognised it as one of the most interesting and extraordinary spectacles I ever beheld, I am wildly anxious to make everybody go there (I verily believe I am occa- sionally suspected of a vested interest in the exhibition), and I am wearily aware that they won't go. It is really very up-hill work, and I don't know why I should do it ; but it makes me- quite uncomfortable when people say carelessly, in answer to my eager question, "Have you seen the panorama ?" "No, we don't care much for panoramas." I understand them,—I, too, was "born so." I had a notion that a panorama was a dauby picture, which never left off being unwound bysome complicated machinery, to an accompaniment of spasmodic music, and the " dem'd, horrid grind" of a professional showman. Perhaps the same is my secret belief about a diorama to this moment, but I am an enthusiastic- convert to the panorama, as on view, en permanence, just across. the road, at the far side of the Palais d'Industrie, where, by the by, they had a concours of lovely pigs and poultry, and such- sheep as any one might be proud to conduct in a straw hat and with a rose-garlanded crook, Watteau-like, during the week before Lent. You must see the panorama to believe in it, your mind is. merely cramped by looking at the outside of the circular building ; but it expands, when, after you have studied a terribly realistic picture of the bombardment of a street, with the houses blown to pieces, and the people killed by the flying missiles, you find your- self transported bodily to the centre of Fort Isay, and in the midst of the busy operations of the Defence, with the Prussian batteries firing, with a seemingly vast space around, and the, doomed city below you. The men, the horses, the guns, the ammunition ; the constant movement, and as constant vigilance;. the terrible ensemble, and the minute details ; above all, the incomparable illusion, the impossibility of believing that you are merely within walls of painted canvas, the impres- sive silence of the few spectators,—each comes lightly up the winding stair to the central platform, and is in his turn struck into the dumb, solicitous attention which adds to the reality of the scene,—all must be witnessed and felt to be under-- stood. Nobody could describe it,—I only urge upon travelling mankind,—go and see the panorama !
A really happy day might include the panorama in the morn- ing, a deliberate inspection en fitineur of the furniture-shops,- they are more resting than the others, because so completely abstract—and a visit to a theatre in the evening. On two. occasions, once when I was contemplating causeuses which would have made a successful coup in a novel, a little while ago, before the romance of upholstery went "out," and again, when I was wondering for what Princess Badroul- badour an incroyable boudoir - plenishing, exhibited on the Boulevard des Italiens, has been made, and whether she cares. at all about Aladdin, I was politely invited to step in and inspect -the contents of the vast show-rooms. I gladly complied, and found it exceedingly pleasant to wander about among such beauti- ful forms and fabrics. If one wants to appreciate the delight of a performance at the Francais, one ought to do deliberately what I did accidentally, that is, to go there just after one has assisted at a performance, at the Grand Opera, of" La Favorite" by singers who would be considered third-rate for ordinary concerts in London. M. Faure is, of course, excepted, but he does not trouble himself to act. The blowsy, blazing, bewildering Opera House, where the design is smothered in the decoration, and there is no rest- for the eye from the gold and the glare, and an overwhelming sense of bigness and heaviness oppresses one, is a thing to wonder at and grow tired of almost simultaneously ; very dill. cult to see thoroughly, but very easy to see as much of as one would ever care to see. I did it all, foyers, coulisses, loggie, peri- style ; I travelled over the vast construction by daylight and in the evening, and I never want to see any of it any more, except the mosaics in the ceiling of the peristyle and the draperies of the circular antechamber of the grand foyer. The famous stair- case is indeed gorgeous, but so enormously heavy that it reverses the idea of a means of ascension ; it seems as contradictory as a bridge would be which should make one think of a diving-bell.
The unadorned severity of the classic theatre of the Rue Richelieu is quite a relief, after the gorgeous frivolity of the "National Academy of Music." I observed that the big cadran in front of the stage, with the "R. F." in Roman capitals, which occupies the place of the Imperial escutcheon, is merely super- imposed upon that superseded ornament. The effect is rather clumsy, for there are gilded scrolls on either side the insignia of the Republic which have no business there. I wonder whether the eagle and the "N." are only stuck on over the simple "L. P." which the "bon bourgeois" affected, and whether, if one scratched deep enough, one might not come to the Bourbon lilies. It was a great treat, or rather a succession of treats, to see "Le Misanthrope," "Adrienne Lecouvreur," and "tine Chaise." Madame Arnould-Plessy, as the Princesse de Bouillon, im- pressed me with a stronger sense than ever of the abso- lute perfection of her acting, her complete possession and mastery of the stage. In the scene where she is waiting for Maurice de Saxe, in her husband's petite maison, the swelling indig- nation, the amazed pride of the grande dame are quite marvellous. I don't think I have ever heard her surpass her utterance of, "Louis Quatorze disait,'J'ai failli attendre,' rnais moi, j'attends!" or the dumb-show of the scene in which Adrienne recites the famous lines from " Phedre," with scathing application to the Prin- cess. Madame Favart as Adrienne played her part well, with plenty of fire and fury, but she could not turn my attention for a moment from the woman who only listened, and defeated by her ineffable acorn and invulnerable self-control the personne de theeitre. M. Got is inimitable as ever as Michonnet, and as the heavy father in " Line Chaine,"—a piece by Scribe, which I was glad to see, because it is considered a chef d'ceuvre of stage situations, though its wit is a little passd,—and because it tests the perfection of the training and the ensemble of the actors at the Francais. It was splendidly played, certainly, but Coquelin condescended to " gag " his part, a declension which I never before witnessed at the Francais, and which the audience approved. This comes of l'esprit moderne, of letting in such newcomers as "Le Sphinx" and "Le Demi- Monde," say profounder observers than I, who insist that in things theatrical in Paris, even at the Francais, there is reason in the old rhyme :—
" Ales enfans, tout degdnere,— Croyez en votre grand'mere."
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