E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland
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AN ENGLISHMAN
IN PARIS

(NOTES AND RECOLLECTIONS)

TWO VOLUMES IN ONE

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1892

Authorized Edition.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

PAGE

The Quartier-Latin in the late thirties — The difference between then and now — A caricature on the walls of Paris — I am anxious to be introduced to the quarter whence it emanated — I am taken to "La Childebert," and make the acquaintance of the original of the caricature — The story of Bouginier and his nose — Dantan as a caricaturist — He abandons that branch of art after he has made Madame Malibran burst into tears at the sight of her statuette — How Bouginier came to be immortalized on the façade of the Passage du Caire — One of the first co-operative societies in France — An artists' hive — The origin of "La Childebert" — Its tenants in my time — The proprietress — Madame Chanfort, the providence of poor painters — Her portraits sold after her death — High jinks at "La Childebert" — The Childebertians and their peacefully inclined neighbours — Gratuitous baths and compulsory douches at "La Childebert" — The proprietress is called upon to repair the roof — The Childebertians bivouac on the Place St. Germain-des-Prés — They start a "Society for the Conversion of the Mahometans" — The public subscribe liberally — What becomes of the subscriptions? — My visits to "La Childebert" breed a taste for the other amusements of the Quartier-Latin — Bobino and its entertainments — The audience — The manager — His stereotyped speech — The reply in chorus — Woe to the bourgeois-intruder — Stove-pipe hats a rarity in the Quartier-Latin — The dress of the collegians — Their mode of living — Suppers when money was flush, rolls and milk when it was not — A fortune-teller in the Rue de Tournon — Her prediction as to the future of Joséphine de Beauharnais — The allowance to students in those days — The Odéon deserted — Students' habits — The Chaumière — Rural excursions — Père Bonvin's [1]

CHAPTER II.

My introduction to the celebrities of the day — The Café de Paris — The old Prince Demidoff — The old man's mania — His sons — The furniture and attendance at the Café de Paris — Its high prices — A mot of Alfred de Musset — The cuisine — A rebuke of the proprietor to Balzac — A version by one of his predecessors of the cause of Vatel's suicide — Some of the habitués — Their intercourse with the attendants — Their courteous behaviour towards one another — Le veau à la casserole — What Alfred de Musset, Balzac, and Alexandre Dumas thought of it — A silhouette of Alfred de Musset — His brother Paul on his election as a member of the Académie — A silhouette of Balzac, between sunset and sunrise — A curious action against the publishers of an almanack — A full-length portrait of Balzac — His pecuniary embarrassments — His visions of wealth and speculations — His constant neglect of his duties as a National Guard — His troubles in consequence thereof — L'Hôtel des Haricots — Some of his fellow-prisoners — Adam, the composer of "Le Postillon de Lonjumeau" — Eugène Sue; his portrait — His dandyism — The origin of the Paris Jockey Club — Eugène Sue becomes a member — The success of "Les Mystères de Paris" — The origin of "Le Juif-Errant" — Sue makes himself objectionable to the members of the Jockey Club — His name struck off the list — His decline and disappearance [24]

CHAPTER III.

Alexandre Dumas père — Why he made himself particularly agreeable to Englishmen — His way of silencing people — The pursuit he loved best next to literature — He has the privilege of going down to the kitchens of the Café de Paris — No one questions his literary genius, some question his culinary capacities — Dr. Véron and his cordon-bleu — Dr. Véron's reasons for dining out instead of at home — Dr. Véron's friend, the philanthropist, who does not go to the theatre because he objects to be hurried with his emotions — Dr. Véron, instigated by his cook, accuses Dumas of having collaborateurs in preparing his dishes as he was known to have collaborateurs in his literary work — Dumas' wrath — He invites us to a dinner which shall be wholly cooked by him in the presence of a delegate to be chosen by the guests — The lot falls upon me — Dr. Véron and Sophie make the amende honorable — A dinner-party at Véron's — A curious lawsuit in connection with Weber's "Freyschutz" — Nestor Roqueplan, who became the successor of the defendant in the case, suggests a way out of it — Léon Pillet virtually adopts it and wins the day — A similar plan adopted years before by a fireman on duty at the opéra, on being tried by court-martial for having fallen asleep during the performance of "Guido et Génevra" — Firemen not bad judges of plays and operas — They were often consulted both by Meyerbeer and Dumas — Dumas at work — How he idled his time away — Dumas causes the traffic receipts of the Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest to swell during his three years' residence at Saint-Germain — M. de Montalivet advises Louis-Philippe to invite Dumas to Versailles, to see what his presence will do for the royal city — Louis-Philippe does not act upon the advice — The relations between Dumas and the d'Orléans family — After the Revolution of '48, Dumas becomes a candidate for parliament — The story of his canvass and his address to the electors at Joigny — Dumas' utter indifference to money matters — He casts his burdens upon others — Dumas and his creditors — Writs and distraints — How they are dealt with — Dumas' indiscriminate generosity — A dozen houses full of new furniture in half as many years — Dumas' frugality at table — Literary remuneration — Dumas and his son — "Leave me a hundred francs" [43]

CHAPTER IV.

Dr. Louis Véron — The real man as distinguished from that of his own "Memoirs" — He takes the management of the Paris Opéra — How it was governed before his advent — Meyerbeer's "Robert le Diable" underlined — Meyerbeer and his doubts upon the merits of his work — Meyerbeer's generosity — Meyerbeer and the beggars of the Rue Le Peletier — Dr. Véron, the inventor of the modern newspaper puff — Some specimens of advertisements in their infancy — Dr. Véron takes a leaf from the book of Molière — Dr. Véron's love of money — His superstitions — His objections to travelling in railways — He quotes the Queen of England as an example — When Queen Victoria overcomes her objection, Véron holds out — "Queen Victoria has got a successor: the Véron dynasty begins and ends with me" — Thirteen at table — I make the acquaintance of Taglioni — The woman and the ballerian — Her adventure at Perth — An improvised performance of "Nathalie, la Laitière Suisse" — Another adventure in Russia — A modern Claude Du-Val — My last meeting with Taglioni — A dinner-party at De Morny's — A comedy scene between husband and wife — Flotow, the composer of "Martha" — His family — His father's objection to the composer's profession — The latter's interview with M. de Saint-Georges, the author of the libretto of Balfe's "Bohemian Girl" — M. de Saint-Georges prevails upon the father to let his son study in Paris for five years, and to provide for him during that time — The supplies are stopped on the last day of the fifth year — Flotow, at the advice of M. de Saint-Georges, stays on and lives by giving piano-lessons — His earthly possessions at his first success — "Rob Roy" at the Hôtel Castellane — Lord Granville's opinion of the music — The Hôtel Castellane and some Paris salons during Louis-Philippe's reign — The Princesse de Lieven's, M. Thiers', etc. — What Madame de Girardin's was like — Victor Hugo's — Perpetual adoration; very artistic, but nothing to eat or to drink — The salon of the ambassador of the Two Sicilies — Lord and Lady Granville at the English Embassy — The salon of Count Apponyi — A story connected with it — Furniture and entertainments — Cakes, ices, and tea; no champagne as during the Second Empire — The Hôtel Castellane and its amateur theatricals — Rival companies — No under-studies — Lord Brougham at the Hôtel Castellane — His bad French and his would-be Don Juanism — A French rendering of Shakespeare's "There is but one step between the sublime and the ridiculous," as applied to Lord Brougham — He nearly accepts a part in a farce where his bad French is likely to produce a comic effect — His successor as a murderer of the language — M. de Saint-Georges — Like Molière, he reads his plays to his housekeeper — When the latter is not satisfied, the dinner is spoilt, however great the success of the play in public estimation — Great men and their housekeepers — Turner, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Eugène Delacroix [62]

CHAPTER V.

The Boulevards in the forties — The Chinese Baths — A favourite tobacconist of Alfred de Musset — The price of cigars — The diligence still the usual mode of travelling — Provincials in Paris — Parliamentary see-saw between M. Thiers and M. Guizot — Amenities of editors — An advocate of universal suffrage — Distribution of gratuitous sausages to the working man on the king's birthday — The rendezvous of actors in search of an engagement — Frédérick Lemaître on the eve of appearing in a new part — The Legitimists begin to leave their seclusion and to mingle with the bourgeoisie — Alexandre Dumas and Scribe — The latter's fertility as a playwright — The National Guards go shooting, in uniform and in companies, on the Plaine Saint-Denis — Vidocq's private inquiry office in the Rue Vivienne — No river-side resorts — The plaster elephant on the Place de la Bastille — The sentimental romances of Loïsa Puget — The songs of the working classes — Cheap bread and wine — How they enjoyed themselves on Sundays and holidays — Théophile Gautier's pony-carriage — The hatred of the bourgeoisie — Nestor Roqueplan's expression of it — Gavarni's — M. Thiers' sister keeps a restaurant at the corner of the Rue Drouot — When he is in power, the members of the Opposition go and dine there, and publish facetious accounts of the entertainment — All appearances to the contrary, people like Guizot better than Thiers — But few entries for the race for wealth in those days — The Rothschilds still live in the Rue Lafitte — Favourite lounges — The Boulevards, the Rue Le Peletier, and the Passage de l'Opéra — The Opéra — The Rue Le Peletier and its attractions — The Restaurant of Paolo Broggi — The Estaminet du Divan — Literary waiters and Boniface — Major Fraser — The mystery surrounding his origin — Another mysterious personage — The Passage de l'Opéra is invaded by the stockjobbers, and loses its prestige as a promenade — Bernard Latte's, the publisher of Donizetti's operas, becomes deserted — Tortoni's — Louis-Blanc — His scruples as an editor — A few words about duelling — Two tragic meetings — Lola Montès — Her adventurous career — A celebrated trial — My first meeting with Gustave Flaubert, the author of "Madame Bovary" and "Salambô" — Émile de Girardin — His opinion of duelling — My decision with regard to it — The original of "La Dame aux Camélias" — Her parentage — Alexandre Dumas gives the diagnosis of her character in connection with his son's play — L'Homme au Caméllia — M. Lautour-Mézerai, the inventor of children's periodical literature in France — Auguste Lireux — He takes the management of the Odéon — Balzac again — His schemes, his greed — Lireux more fortunate with other authors — Anglophobia on the French stage — Gallophobia on the English stage [86]

CHAPTER VI.

Rachel and some of her fellow-actors — Rachel's true character — Her greediness and spitefulness — Her vanity and her wit — Her powers of fascination — The cost of being fascinated by her — Her manner of levying toll — Some of her victims, Comte Duchâtel and Dr. Véron — The story of her guitar — A little transaction between her and M. Fould — Her supposed charity and generosity — Ten tickets for a charity concert — How she made them into twenty — How she could have made them into a hundred — Baron Taylor puzzled — Her manner of giving presents — Beauvallet's precaution with regard to one of her gifts — Alexandre Dumas the younger, wiser or perhaps not so wise in his generation — Rachel as a raconteuse — The story of her début at the Gymnase — What Rachel would have been as an actor instead of an actress — Her comic genius — Rachel's mother — What became of Rachel's money — Mama Félix as a pawnbroker — Rachel's trinkets — Two curious bracelets — Her first appearance before Nicholas I. — A dramatic recital in the open air — Rachel's opinion of the handsomest man in Europe — Rachel and Samson — Her obligations to him — How she repays them — How she goes to Berryer to be coached in the fable of "The Two Pigeons" — An anecdote of Berryer — Rachel's fear of a "warm reception" on the first night of "Adrienne Lecouvreur" — How she averts the danger — Samson as a man and as an actor — Petticoat-revolts at the Comédie-Française — Samson and Régnier as buffers — Their different ways of pouring oil upon the troubled waters — Mdlle. Sylvanie Plessy — A parallel between her and Sarah Bernhardt — Samson and Régnier's pride in their profession — The different character of that pride — "Apollo with a bad tailor, and who dresses without a looking-glass" — Samson gives a lesson in declamation to a procureur-impérial — The secret of Régnier's greatness as an actor — A lesson at the Conservatoire — Régnier on "make-up" — Régnier's opinion of genius on the stage — A mot of Augustine Brohan — Giovanni, the wigmaker of the Comédie-Française — His pride in his profession — M. Ancessy, the musical director, and his three wigs [128]

CHAPTER VII.

Two composers, Auber and Félicien David — Auber, the legend of his youthful appearance — How it arose — His daily rides, his love of women's society — His mot on Mozart's "Don Juan" — The only drawback to Auber's enjoyment of women's society — His reluctance to take his hat off — How he managed to keep it on most of the time — His opinion upon Meyerbeer's and Halévy's genius — His opinion upon Gérard de Nerval, who hanged himself with his hat on — His love of solitude — His fondness of Paris — His grievance against his mother for not having given him birth there — He refuses to leave Paris at the commencement of the siege — His small appetite — He proposes to write a new opera when the Prussians are gone — Auber suffers no privations, but has difficulty in finding fodder for his horse — The Parisians claim it for food — Another legend about Auber's independence of sleep — How and where he generally slept — Why Auber snored in Véron's company, and why he did not in that of other people — His capacity for work — Auber a brilliant talker — Auber's gratitude to the artists who interpreted his work, but different from Meyerbeer's — The reason why, according to Auber — Jealousy or humility — Auber and the younger Coquelin — "The verdict on all things in this world may be summed up in the one phrase, 'It's an injustice'" — Félicien David — The man — The beginnings of his career — His terrible poverty — He joins the Saint-Simoniens, and goes with some of them to the East — Their reception at Constantinople — M. Scribe and the libretto of "L'Africaine" — David in Egypt at the court of Mehemet-Ali — David's description of him — Mehemet's way of testing the educational progress of his sons — Woe to the fat kine — Mehemet-Ali suggests a new mode of teaching music to the inmates of the harem — Félicien David's further wanderings in Egypt — Their effect upon his musical genius — His return to France — He tells the story of the first performance of "Le Désert" — An ambulant box-office — His success — Fame, but no money — He sells the score of "Le Désert" — He loses his savings — "La Perle du Brésil" and the Coup-d'État — "No luck" — Napoléon III. remains his debtor for eleven years — A mot of Auber, and one of Alexandre Dumas père — The story of "Aïda" — Why Félicien David did not compose the music — The real author of the libretto [152]

CHAPTER VIII.

Three painters, and a school for pifferari — Gabriel Decamps, Eugène Delacroix, and Horace Vernet — The prices of pictures in the forties — Delacroix' find no purchasers at all — Decamps' drawings fetch a thousand francs each — Decamps not a happy man — The cause of his unhappiness — The man and the painter — He finds no pleasure in being popular — Eugène Delacroix — His contempt for the bourgeoisie — A parallel between Delacroix and Shakespeare — Was Delacroix tall or short? — His love of flowers — His delicate health — His personal appearance — His indifference to the love-passion — George Sand and Delacroix — A miscarried love-scene — Delacroix' housekeeper, Jenny Leguillou — Delacroix does not want to pose as a model for one of George Sand's heroes — Delacroix as a writer — His approval of Carlyle's dictum, "Show me how a man sings," etc. — His humour tempered by his reverence — His failure as a caricaturist — His practical jokes on would-be art-critics — Delacroix at home — His dress while at work — Horace Vernet's, Paul Delaroche's, Ingres' — Early at work — He does not waste time over lunch — How he spent his evenings — His dislike of being reproduced in marble or on canvas after his death — Horace Vernet — The contrast between the two men and the two artists — Vernet's appearance — His own account of how he became a painter — Moral and mental resemblance to Alexandre Dumas père — His political opinions — Vernet and Nicholas I. — A bold answer — His opinion on the mental state of the Romanoffs — The comic side of Vernet's character — He thinks himself a Vauban — His interviews with M. Thiers — His admiration for everything military — His worship of Alfred de Vigny — His ineffectual attempts to paint a scene in connection with the storming of Constantine — Laurent-Jan proposes to write an epic on it — He gives a synopsis of the cantos — Laurent-Jan lives "on the fat of the land" for six months — A son of Napoléon's companion in exile, General Bertrand — The chaplain of "la Belle-Poule" — The first French priest who wore the English dress — Horace Vernet and the veterans of "la grande armée" — His studio during their occupancy of it as models — His budget — His hatred of pifferari — A professor — The Quartier-Latin revisited [164]

CHAPTER IX.

Louis-Philippe and his family — An unpublished theatrical skit on his mania for shaking hands with every one — His art of governing, according to the same skit — Louis-Philippe not the ardent admirer of the bourgeoisie he professed to be — The Faubourg Saint-Germain deserts the Tuileries — The English in too great a majority — Lord ——'s opinion of the dinners at the Tuileries — The attitude of the bourgeoisie towards Louis-Philippe, according to the King himself — Louis-Philippe's wit — His final words on the death of Talleyrand — His love of money — He could be generous at times — A story of the Palais-Royal — Louis-Philippe and the Marseillaise — Two curious stories connected with the Marseillaise — Who was the composer of it? — Louis-Philippe's opinion of the throne, the crown, and the sceptre of France as additions to one's comfort — His children, and especially his sons, take things more easily — Even the Bonapartists admired some of the latter — A mot of an imperialist — How the boys were brought up — Their nocturnal rambles later on — The King himself does not seem to mind those escapades, but is frightened at M. Guizot hearing of them — Louis-Philippe did not understand Guizot — The recollection of his former misery frequently haunts the King — He worries Queen Victoria with his fear of becoming poor — Louis-Philippe an excellent husband and father — He wants to write the libretto of an opera on an English subject — His religion — The court receptions ridiculous — Even the proletariat sneer at them — The entrée of the Duchesse d'Orléans into Paris — The scene in the Tuileries gardens — A mot of Princesse Clémentine on her father's too paternal solicitude — A practical joke of the Prince de Joinville — His caricatures and drawings — The children inherited their talent for drawing and modelling from their mother — The Duc de Nemours as a miniature and water-colour painter — Suspected of being a Legitimist — All Louis-Philippe's children great patrons of art — How the bourgeoisie looked upon their intercourse with artists — The Duc de Nemours' marvellous memory — The studio of Eugène Lami — His neighbours, Paul Delaroche and Honoré de Balzac — The Duc de Nemours' bravery called in question — The Duc d'Aumale's exploits in Algeria considered mere skirmishes — A curious story of spiritism — The Duc d'Aumale a greater favourite with the world than any of the other sons of Louis-Philippe — His wit — The Duc d'Orléans also a great favourite — His visits to Decamps' studio — An indifferent classical scholar — A curious kind of black-mail — His indifference to money — There is no money in a Republic — His death — A witty reply to the Legitimists [185]

CHAPTER X.

The Revolution of '48 — The beginning of it — The National Guards in all their glory — The Café Grégoire on the Place du Caire — The price of a good breakfast in '48 — The palmy days of the Cuisine Bourgeoise — The excitement on the Boulevards on Sunday, February 20th, '48 — The theatres — A ball at Poirson's, the erstwhile director of the Gymnase — A lull in the storm — Tuesday, February 22nd — Another visit to the Café Grégoire — On my way thither — The Comédie-Française closes its doors — What it means, according to my old tutor — We are waited upon by a sergeant and corporal — We are no longer "messieurs," but "citoyens" — An eye to the main chance — The patriots do a bit of business in tricolour cockades — The company marches away — Casualties — "Le patriotisme" means the difference between the louis d'or and the écu of three francs — The company bivouacs on the Boulevard Saint-Martin — A tyrant's victim "malgré lui" — Wednesday, February 23rd — The Café Grégoire once more — The National Guards en négligé — A novel mode of settling accounts — The National Guards fortify the inner man — A bivouac on the Boulevard du Temple — A camp scene from an opera — I leave — My companion's account — The National Guards protect the regulars — The author of these notes goes to the theatre — The Gymnase and the Variétés on the eve of the Revolution — Bouffé and Déjazet — Thursday, February 24th, '48 — The Boulevards at 9.30 a.m. — No milk — The Revolutionaries do without it — The Place du Carrousel — The sovereign people fire from the roofs on the troops — The troops do not dislodge them — The King reviews the troops — The apparent inactivity of Louis-Philippe's sons — A theory about the difference in bloodshed. — One of the three ugliest men in France comes to see the King — Seditious cries — The King abdicates — Chaos — The sacking of the Tuileries — Receptions and feasting in the Galerie de Diane — "Du café pour nous, des cigarettes pour les dames" — The dresses of the princesses — The bourgeois feast the gamins who guard the barricades — The Republic proclaimed — The riff-raff insist upon illuminations — An actor promoted to the Governorship of the Hôtel de Ville — Some members of the "provisional Government" at work — Méry on Lamartine — Why the latter proclaimed the Republic [208]

CHAPTER XI.

The Second Republic — Lamartine's reason for proclaiming it — Suspects Louis-Napoléon of similar motives for wishing to overthrow it — Tells him to go back to England — De Persigny's account of Louis-Napoléon's landing in France after February 24th, '48 — Providential interference on behalf of Louis-Napoléon — Justification of Louis-Napoléon's belief in his "star" — My first meeting with him — The origin of a celebrated nickname — Badinguet a creation of Gavarni — Louis-Napoléon and his surroundings at the Hôtel du Rhin — His appearance and dress — Lord Normanby's opinion of his appearance — Louis-Napoléon's French — A mot of Bismarck — Cavaignac, Thiers, and Victor Hugo's wrong estimate of his character — Cavaignac and his brother Godefroi — The difference between Thiers and General Cavaignac — An elector's mot — Some of the candidates for the presidency of the Second Republic — Electioneering expenses — Impecuniosity of Louis-Napoléon — A story in connection with it — The woman with the wooden legs — The salons during the Second Republic — The theatres and their skits on the situation — "La Propriété c'est le Vol" — France governed by the National — A curious list of ministers and officials of the Second Republic — Armand Marrast — His plans for reviving business — His receptions at the Palais-Bourbon as President of the Chamber of Deputies — Some of the guests — The Corps Diplomatique — The new deputies, their wives and daughters [232]

CHAPTER XII.

Guizot, Lamartine, and Béranger — Public opinion at sea with regard to the real Guizot — People fail to see the real man behind the politician — Guizot regrets this false conception — "I have not the courage to be unpopular" — A tilt at Thiers — My first meeting with him — A picture and the story connected with it — M. Guizot "at home" — His apartment — The company — M. Guizot on "the Spanish marriages" — His indictment against Lord Palmerston — An incident in connection with Napoléon's tomb at the Invalides — Nicolas I. and Napoléon — My subsequent intimacy with M. Guizot — Guizot as a father — His correspondence with his daughters — A story of Henry Mürger and Marguerite Thuillier — M. Guizot makes up his mind not to live in Paris any longer — M. Guizot on "natural scenery" — Never saw the sea until he was over fifty — Why M. Guizot did not like the country; why M. Thiers did not like it — Thiers the only man at whom Guizot tilted — M. Guizot died poor — M. de Lamartine's poverty did not inspire the same respect — Lamartine's impecuniosity — My only visit to Lamartine's house — Du Jellaby doré — With a difference — All the stories and anecdotes about M. de Lamartine relate to his improvidence and impecuniosity — Ten times worse in that respect than Balzac — M. Guizot's literary productions and M. de Lamartine's — The national subscription raised for the latter — How he anticipates some of the money — Béranger — My first acquaintance with him — Béranger's verdict on the Second Republic — Béranger's constant flittings — Dislikes popularity — The true story of Béranger and Mdlle. Judith Frère [249]

CHAPTER XIII.

Some men of the Empire — Fialin de Persigny — The public prosecutor's opinion of him expressed at the trial for high treason in 1836 — Superior in many respects to Louis-Napoléon — The revival of the Empire his only and constant dream — In order to realize it, he appeals first to Jérôme, ex-King of Westphalia — De Persigny's estimate of him — Jérôme's greed and Louis-Napoléon's generosity — De Persigny's financial embarrassments — His charity — What the Empire really meant to him — De Persigny virtually the moving spirit in the Coup d'État — Louis-Napoléon might have been satisfied with the presidency of the republic for life — Persigny seeks for aid in England — Palmerston's share in the Coup d'État — The submarine cable — Preparations for the Coup d'État — A warning of it sent to England — Count Walewski issues invitations for a dinner-party on the 2nd of December — Opinion in London that Louis-Napoléon will get the worst in the struggle with the Chamber — The last funds from London — General de Saint-Arnaud and Baron Lacrosse — The Élysée-Bourbon on the evening of the 1st of December — I pass the Élysée at midnight — Nothing unusual — London on the 2nd of December — The dinner at Count Walewski's put off at the last moment — Illuminations at the French Embassy a few hours later — Palmerston at the Embassy — Some traits of De Persigny's character — His personal affection for Louis-Napoléon — Madame de Persigny — Her parsimony — Her cooking of the household accounts — Chevet and Madame de Persigny — What the Empire might have been with a Von Moltke by the side of the Emperor instead of Vaillant, Niel, and Lebœuf — Colonel (afterwards General) Fleury the only modest man among the Emperor's entourage — De Persigny's pretensions as a Heaven-born statesman — Mgr. de Mérode — De Morny — His first meeting with his half-brother — De Morny as a grand seigneur — The origin of the Mexican campaign — Walewski — His fads — Rouher — My first sight of him in the Quartier-Latin — The Emperor's opinion of him at the beginning of his career — Rouher in his native home, Auvergne — His marriage — Madame Rouher — His father-in-law [261]

CHAPTER XIV.

Society during the Second Empire — The Court at Compiègne — The English element — Their opinion of Louis-Napoléon — The difference between the court of Louis-Philippe and that of Napoléon III. — The luggage of M. Villemain — The hunts in Louis-Philippe's time — Louis-Napoléon's advent — Would have made a better poet than an Emperor — Looks for a La Vallière or Montespan, and finds Mdlle. Eugénie de Montijo — The latter determined not to be a La Vallière or even a Pompadour — Has her great destiny foretold in her youth — Makes up her mind that it shall be realized by a right-handed and not a left-handed marriage — Queen Victoria stands her sponsor among the sovereigns of Europe — Mdlle. de Montijo's mother — The Comtesse de Montijo and Halévy's "Madame Cardinal" — The first invitations to Compiègne — Mdlle. de Montijo's backers for the Imperial stakes — No other entries — Louis-Napoléon utters the word "marriage" — What led up to it — The Emperor officially announces his betrothal — The effect it produced — The Faubourg St.-Germain — Dupin the elder gives his views — The engaged couple feel very uncomfortable — Negotiations to organize the Empress's future household — Rebuffs — Louis Napoléon's retorts — Mdlle. de Montijo's attempt at wit and sprightliness — Her iron will — Her beauty — Her marriage — She takes Marie-Antoinette for her model — She fondly imagines that she was born to rule — She presumes to teach Princess Clotilde the etiquette of courts — The story of two detectives — The hunts at Compiègne — Some of the mise en scène and dramatis personæ — The shooting-parties — Mrs. Grundy not banished, but specially invited and drugged — The programme of the gatherings — Compiègne in the season — A story of an Englishman accommodated for the night in one of the Imperial luggage-vans [288]

CHAPTER XV.

Society during the Empire — The series of guests at Compiègne — The amusements — the absence of musical taste in the Bonapartes — The programme on the first, second, third, and fourth days — An anecdote of Lafontaine, the actor — Theatrical performances and balls — The expenses of the same — The theatre at Compiègne — The guests, male and female — "Neck or nothing" for the latter, uniform for the former — The rest have to take "back seats" — The selection of guests among the notabilities of Compiègne — A mayor's troubles — The Empress's and the Emperor's conflicting opinions with regard to female charms — Bassano in "hot water" — Tactics of the demi-mondaines — Improvement from the heraldic point of view in the Empress's entourage — The cocodettes — Their dress — Worth — When every pretext for a change of toilette is exhausted, the court ladies turn themselves into ballerinas — "Le Diable à Quatre" at Compiègne — The ladies appear at the ball afterwards in their gauze skirts — The Emperor's dictum with regard to ballet-dancers and men's infatuation for them — The Emperor did not like stupid women — The Emperor's "eye" for a handsome woman — The Empress does not admire the instinct — William I. of Prussia acts as comforter — The hunt — Actors, "supers," and spectators — "La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas" — The Imperial procession — The Empress's and Emperor's unpunctuality — Louis-Napoléon not a "well-dressed man" — The Empress wished to get back before dark — The reason of this wish — Though unpunctual, punctual on hunt-days — The police measures at those gatherings — M. Hyrvoix and M. Boitelle — The Empress did not like the truth, the Emperor did — Her anxiety to go to St. Lazare [304]

CHAPTER XVI.

The story of a celebrated sculptor and his model — David d'Angers at the funeral of Cortot, the sculptor — How I became acquainted with him — The sculptor leaves the funeral procession to speak to a woman — He tells me the story — David d'Angers' sympathy with Greece in her struggle for independence — When Botzaris falls at Missolonghi, he makes up his mind to carve his monument — Wishes to do something original — He finds his idea in the cemetery of Père-la-Chaise — In search of a model — Comes unexpectedly upon her in the Rue du Montparnasse, while in company of Victor Hugo — The model and her mother — The bronze Christ on the studio wall — David gives it to his model — The latter dismissed — A plot against the sculptor's life — His model saves him — He tries to find her and fails — Only meets with her when walking behind the hearse of Cortot — She appears utterly destitute — Loses sight of her again — Meets her on the outer boulevards with a nondescript of the worst character — He endeavours to rescue her, but fails — Canler, of the Paris police, reveals the tactics pursued with regard to "unfortunates" — David's exile and death — The Botzaris Monument is brought back to Paris to be restored — The model at the door of the exhibition — Her death [323]

CHAPTER XVII.

Queen Victoria in Paris — The beginning of the era of middle-class excursions — English visitors before that — The British tourist of 1855 — The real revenge of Waterloo — The Englishman's French and the Frenchman's English — The opening of the Exhibition — The lord mayor and aldermen in Paris — The King of Portugal — All these considered so much "small fry" — Napoléon III. goes to Boulogne to welcome the Queen — The royal yacht is delayed — The French hotel proprietor the greatest artist in fleecing — The Italian, the Swiss, the German, mere bunglers in comparison — Napoléon III. before the arrival of the Queen — Pondering the past — Arrival of the Queen — The Queen lands, followed by Prince Albert and the royal children — The Emperor rides by the side of her carriage — Comments on the population — An old salt on the situation — An old soldier's retort — The general feeling — Arrival in Paris — The Parisians' reception of the Queen — A description of the route — The apartments of the Queen at St. Cloud — How the Queen spent Sunday — Visits the art section of the Exhibition on Monday — Ingres and Horace Vernet presented to her — Frenchmen's ignorance of English art in those days — English and French art critics — The Queen takes a carriage drive through Paris — Not a single cry of "Vive l'Angleterre!" a great many of "Vive la Reine" — England making a cats-paw of France — Reception at the Élysée-Bourbon — "Les Demoiselles de Saint-Cyr" at St. Cloud — Alexandre Dumas would have liked to see the Queen — Visit to Versailles — State-performances at the Opéra — Ball at the Hôtel de Ville — The Queen's dancing — Canrobert on "the Queen's dancing and her soldiers' fighting" — Another visit to the Exhibition — Béranger misses seeing the Queen — "I am not going to see the Queen, but the woman" — A review in the Champ-de-Mars — A visit to Napoléon's tomb — Jérôme's absence on the plea of illness — Marshal Vaillant's reply to the Emperor when the latter invites him to take Jérôme's place — His comments on the receptions given by the Emperor to foreign sovereigns — Fêtes at Versailles — Homeward [336]

CHAPTER XVIII.

Marshal Vaillant — The beginning of our acquaintance — His stories of the swashbucklers of the First Empire, and the beaux of the Restauration — Rabelaisian, but clever — Marshal Vaillant neither a swashbuckler nor a beau; hated both — Never cherished the slightest illusions about the efficiency of the French army — Acknowledged himself unable to effect the desired and necessary reforms — To do that, a minister of war must become a fixture — Why he stayed — Careful of the public moneys, and of the Emperor's also — Napoléon III.'s lavishness — An instance of it — Vaillant never dazzled by the grandeur of court entertainments — Not dazzled by anything — His hatred of wind-bags — Prince de Canino — Matutinal interviews — Prince de Canino sends his seconds — Vaillant declines the meeting, and gives his reason — Vaillant abrupt at the best of times — A freezing reception — A comic interview — Attempts to shirk military duty — Tricks — Mistakes — A story in point — More tricks — Sham ailments: how the marshal dealt with them — When the marshal was not in an amiable mood — Another interview — Vaillant's tactics — "D——d annoying to be wrong" — The marshal fond of science — A very interesting scientific phenomenon himself — Science under the later Bourbons — Suspicion of the soldiers of the Empire — The priesthood and the police — The most godless republic preferable to a continuance of their régime — The marshal's dog, Brusca — Her dislike to civilians — Brusca's chastity — Vaillant's objection to insufficiently prepaid letters — His habit of missing the train, notwithstanding his precautions — His objection to fuss and public honours [351]

CHAPTER XIX.

The Franco-German War — Friday, July 15, 1870, 6 p.m. — My friends "confident of France being able to chastise the insolence of the King of Prussia" — I do not share their confidence; but do not expect a crushing defeat — Napoléon III.'s presence aggravated the disasters; his absence would not have averted them — He himself had no illusions about the efficiency of the army, did not suspect the rottenness of it — His previous endeavours at reorganization — The real drift of his proposed inquiries — His plan meant also compulsory service for every one — Why the legislature opposed it — The makeshift proposed by it — Napoléon weary, body and soul — His physical condition — A great consultation and the upshot of it — Dr. Ricord and what he told me — I am determined to see and hear, though not to speak — I sally forth — The streets on the evening of Friday, the 15th of July — The illuminations — Patriotism or Chauvinism — The announcement of a bookseller — What Moltke thought of it — The opinion of a dramatist on the war — The people; no horse-play — No work done on Saturday and Sunday — Cabmen — "A man does not pay for his own funeral, monsieur" — The northern station on Sunday — The departing Germans — The Emperor's particular instructions with regard to them — Alfred de Musset's "Rhin Allemand" — Prévost-Paradol and the news of his suicide — The probable cause of it — A chat with a superior officer — The Emperor's Sunday receptions at the Tuileries — Promotions in the army, upon what basis — Good and bad officers — The officers' mess does not exist — Another general officer gives his opinion — Marshal Niel and Lebœuf — The plan of campaign suddenly altered — The reason — The Emperor leaves St. Cloud — His confidence shaken before then — Some telegrams from the commanders of divisions — Thiers is appealed to, to stem the tide of retrenchment; afterwards to take the portfolio of war — The Emperor's opinion persistently disregarded at the Tuileries — Trochu — The dancing colonels at the Tuileries [367]

CHAPTER XX.

The war — Reaction before the Emperor's departure — The moral effects of the publication of the draft treaty — "Bismarck has done the Emperor" — The Parisians did not like the Empress — The latter always anxious to assume the regency — A retrospect — Crimean war — The Empress and Queen Victoria — Solferino — The regency of '65 — Bismarck's millinery bills — Lord Lyons — Bismarck and the Duc de Gramont — Lord Lyons does not foresee war — The republicans and the war — The Empress — Two ministerial councils and their consequences — Mr. Prescott-Hewett sent for — Joseph Ferrari, the Italian philosopher — The Empress — The ferment in Paris — "Too much prologue to 'The Taming of the German Shrew'" — The first engagement — The "Marseillaise" — An infant performer — The "Marseillaise" at the Comédie-Française — The "Marseillaise" by command of the Emperor — A patriotic ballet — The courtesy of the French at Fontenoy — The Café de la Paix — General Beaufort d'Hautpoul and Moltke — Newspaper correspondents — Edmond About tells a story about one of his colleagues — News supplied by the Government — What it amounted to — The information it gave to the enemy — Bazaine, "the glorious" one — Palikao — The fall of the Empire does not date from Sedan, but from Woerth and Speicheren — Those who dealt it the heaviest blow — The Empress, the Empress, and no one but the Empress [385]

CHAPTER XXI.

The 4th of September — A comic, not a tragic revolution — A burlesque Harold and a burlesque Boadicea — The news of Sedan only known publicly on the 3rd of September — Grief and consternation, but no rage — The latter feeling imported by the bands of Delescluze, Blanqui, and Félix Pyat — Blanqui, Pyat, & Co. versus Favre, Gambetta, & Co. — The former want their share of the spoil, and only get it some years afterwards — Ramail goes to the Palais-Bourbon — His report — Paris spends the night outdoors — Thiers a second-rate Talleyrand — His journey to the different courts of Europe — His interview with Lord Granville — The 4th of September — The Imperial eagles disappear — The joyousness of the crowd — The Place de la Concorde — The gardens of the Tuileries — The crowds in the Rue de Rivoli scarcely pay attention to the Tuileries — The soldiers fraternizing with the people, and proclaiming the republic from the barracks' windows — A serious procession — Sampierro Gavini gives his opinion — The "heroic struggles" of an Empress, and the crownless coronation of "le Roi Pétaud" — Ramail at the Tuileries — How M. Sardou saved the palace from being burned and sacked — The republic proclaimed — Illuminations as after a victory [404]

CHAPTER XXII.

The siege — The Parisians convinced that the Germans will not invest Paris — Paris becomes a vast drill-ground, nevertheless — The Parisians leave off singing, but listen to itinerant performers, though the latter no longer sing the "Marseillaise" — The theatres closed — The Comédie-Française and the Opéra — Influx of the Gardes Mobiles — The Parisian no longer chaffs the provincial, but does the honours of the city to him — The stolid, gaunt Breton and the astute and cynical Normand — The gardens of the Tuileries an artillery park — The mitrailleuse still commands confidence — The papers try to be comic — Food may fail, drink will not — My visit to the wine dépôt at Bercy — An official's information — Cattle in the public squares and on the outer Boulevards — Fear with regard to them — Every man carries a rifle — The woods in the suburbs are set on fire — The statue of Strasburg on the Place de la Concorde — M. Prudhomme to his sons — The men who do not spout — The French shopkeeper and bourgeois — A story of his greed — He reveals the whereabouts of the cable laid on the bed of the Seine — Obscure heroes — Would-be Ravaillacs and Balthazar Gerards — Inventors of schemes for the instant annihilation of all the Germans — A musical mitrailleuse — An exhibition and lecture at the Alcazar — The last train — Trains converted into dwellings for the suburban poor — Interior of a railway station — The spy mania — Where the Parisians ought to have looked for spies — I am arrested as a spy — A chat with the officer in charge — A terrible-looking knife [414]

CHAPTER XXIII.

The siege — The food-supply of Paris — How and what the Parisians eat and drink — Bread, meat, and wine — Alcoholism — The waste among the London poor — The French take a lesson from the alien — The Irish at La Villette — A whisper of the horses being doomed — M. Gagne — The various attempts to introduce horseflesh — The journals deliver their opinions — The supply of horseflesh as it stood in '70 — The Académie des Sciences — Gelatine — Kitchen gardens on the balcony — M. Lockroy's experiment — M. Pierre Joigneux and the Englishman — If cabbages, why not mushrooms? — There is still a kitchen garden left — Cream cheese from the moon, to be fetched by Gambetta — His departure in a balloon — Nadar and Napoléon III. — Carrier-pigeons — An aerial telegraph — Offers to cross the Prussian lines — The theatres — A performance at the Cirque National — "Le Roi s'amuse," at the Théâtre de Montmartre — A déjeûner at Durand's — Weber and Beethoven — Long winter nights without fuel or gas — The price of provisions — The Parisian's good-humour — His wit — The greed of the shopkeeper — Culinary literature — More's "Utopia" — An ex-lieutenant of the Foreign Legion — He gives us a breakfast — He delivers a lecture on food — Joseph, his servant — Milk — The slender resources of the poor — I interview an employé of the State Pawnshop — Statistics — Hidden provisions — Bread — Prices of provisions — New Year's Day, and New Year's dinners — The bombardment — No more bread — The end of the siege [429]

CHAPTER XXIV.

Some men of the Commune — Cluseret — His opinion of Rossel — His opinion of Bergeret — What Cluseret was fighting for — Thiers and Abraham Lincoln — Raoul Rigault on horseback — Théophile Ferré — Ferré and Gil-Pérès, the actor — The comic men of the Commune — Gambon — Jourde, one of the most valuable of the lot — His financial abilities — His endeavours to save — Jourde at Godillot's — Colonel Maxime Lisbonne — The Editor's recollections of him — General Dombrowski and General la Cécilia — A soirée at the Tuileries — A gala-performance at the Opéra Comique — The death-knell of the Commune [462]

AN ENGLISHMAN IN PARIS.

CHAPTER I.

Long before Baron Haussmann began his architectural transformation, many parts of Paris had undergone changes, perceptible only to those who had been brought up among the inhabitants, though distinct from them in nationality, education, habits, and tastes. Paris became to a certain extent, and not altogether voluntarily, cosmopolitan before the palatial mansions, the broad avenues, the handsome public squares which subsequently excited the admiration of the civilized world had been dreamt of, and while its outer aspect was as yet scarcely modified. This was mainly due to the establishment of railways, which caused in the end large influxes of foreigners and provincials, who as it were drove the real Parisian from his haunts. Those visitors rarely penetrated in large numbers to the very heart of the Quartier-Latin. When they crossed the bridges that span the Seine, it was to see the Sorbonne, the Panthéon, the Observatory, the Odéon, and the Luxembourg; they rarely stayed after nightfall. The Prado, the Théâtre Bobino, the students' taverns, escaped their observation when there was really something to see; and now, when the Closerie des Lilas has become the Bal Bullier, when the small theatre has been demolished, and when the taverns are in no way distinguished from other Parisian taverns—when, in short, commonplace pervades the whole—people flock thither very often. But during the whole of the forties, and even later, the rive gauche, with its Quartier-Latin and adjacent Faubourg St. Germain, were almost entirely sacred from the desecrating stare of the deliberate sightseer; and, consequently, the former especially, preserved its individuality, not only materially, but mentally and morally—immorally would perhaps have been the word that would have risen to the lips of the observer who lacked the time and inclination to study the life led there deeper than it appeared merely on the surface. For though there was a good deal of roystering and practical joking, and short-lasted liaison, there was little of deliberate vice, of strategic libertinism—if I may be allowed to coin the expression. True, every Jack had his Jill, but, as a rule, it was Jill who had set the ball rolling.

The Quartier-Latin not only sheltered sucking lawyers and doctors, budding professors and savans and littérateurs, but artists whose names have since then become world-renowned. It was with some of these that I was most thrown in contact in that quarter, partly from inclination, because from my earliest youth I have been fonder of pictures than of books, partly because at that time I had already seen so many authors of fame, most of whom were the intimate acquaintances of a connection of mine, that I cared little to seek the society of those who had not arrived at that stage. I was very young, and, though not devoid of faith in possibilities, too mentally indolent when judgment in that respect involved the sitting down to manuscripts. It was so much easier and charming to be able to discover a budding genius by a mere glance at a good sketch, even when the latter was drawn in charcoal on a not particularly clean "whitewashed" wall.

I was scarcely more than a stripling when one morning such a sketch appeared on the walls of Paris, and considerably mystified, while it at the same time amused the inhabitants of the capital. It was not the work of what we in England would call a "seascape and mackerel artist," for no such individual stood by to ask toll of the admirers; it was not an advertisement, for in those days that mode of mural publicity was scarcely born, let alone in its infancy, in Paris. What, then, was this colossal, monumental nose, the like of which I have only seen on the faces of four human beings, one of whom was Hyacinth, the famous actor of the Palais-Royal, the other three being M. d'Argout, the Governor of the Bank of France; M. de Jussieu, the Director of the Jardin des Plantes; and Lasailly, Balzac's secretary? What was this colossal nose, with a ridiculously small head and body attached to it? The nasal organ was certainly phenomenal, even allowing for the permissible exaggeration of the caricaturist, but it could surely not be the only title of its owner to this sudden leap into fame! Was it a performing nose, or one endowed with extraordinary powers of smell? I puzzled over the question for several days, until one morning I happened to run against my old tutor, looking at the picture and laughing till the tears ran down his wrinkled cheeks. It was a positive pleasure to see him. "C'est bien lui, c'est bien lui," he exclaimed; "c'est absolument son portrait craché!" "Do you know the original?" I asked. "Mais, sans doute, je le connais, c'est un ami de mon fils, du reste, toute le monde connait Bouginier." "But I do not know him," I protested, feeling very much ashamed of my ignorance. "Ah, you! that's quite a different thing; you do not live in the Quartier-Latin, but everybody there knows him." From that moment I knew no rest until I had made the acquaintance of Bouginier, which was not very difficult; and through him I became a frequent visitor to "La Childebert," which deserves a detailed description, because, though it was a familiar haunt to many Parisians of my time with a taste for Bohemian society, I doubt whether many Englishmen, save (the late) Mr. Blanchard Jerrold and one of the Mayhews, ever set foot there, and even they could not have seen it in its prime.

But before I deal with "La Childebert," I must say a few words about Bouginier, who, contrary to my expectations, owed his fame solely to his proboscis. He utterly disappeared from the artistic horizon in a few years, but his features still live in the memory of those who knew him through a statuette in terra cotta modelled by Dantan the younger. During the reign of Louis-Philippe, Dantan took to that branch of art as a relaxation from his more serious work; he finally abandoned it after he had made Madame Malibran burst into tears, instead of making her laugh, as he intended, at her own caricature. Those curious in such matters may see Bouginier's presentment in a medallion on the frontispiece of the Passage du Caire, amidst the Egyptian divinities and sphinxes. As a matter of course, the spectator asks himself why this modern countenance should find itself in such incongruous company, and he comes almost naturally to the conclusion that Bouginier was the owner, or perhaps the architect, of this arcade, almost exclusively tenanted—until very recently—by lithographers, printers, etc. The conclusion, however, would be an erroneous one. Bouginier, as far as is known, never had any property in Paris or elsewhere; least of all was he vain enough to perpetuate his own features in that manner, even if he had had an opportunity, but he had not; seeing that he was not an architect, but simply a painter, of no great talents certainly, but, withal, modest and sensible, and as such opposed to, or at any rate not sharing, the crazes of mediævalism, romanticism, and other isms in which the young painters of that day indulged, and which they thought fit to emphasize in public and among one another by eccentricities of costume and language, supposed to be in harmony with the periods they had adopted for illustration. This absence of enthusiasm one way or the other aroused the ire of his fellow-lodgers at the "Childebert," and one of them, whose pencil was more deft at that kind of work than those of the others, executed their vengeance, and drew Bouginier's picture on the "fag end" of a dead wall in the vicinity of the Church of St. Germain-des-Prés. The success was instantaneous and positively overwhelming, though truth compels one to state that this was the only flash of genius that illumined that young fellow's career. His name was Fourreau, and one looks in vain for his name in the biographical dictionaries or encyclopedias of artists. Fate has even been more cruel to him than to his model.

For the moment, however, the success, as I have already said, was overwhelming. In less than a fortnight there was not a single wall in Paris and its outskirts without a Bouginier on its surface. Though Paris was considerably less in area than it is now, it wanted a Herculean effort to accomplish this. No man, had he been endowed with as many arms as Briareus, would have sufficed for it. Nor would it have done to trust to more or less skilful copyists—they might have failed to catch the likeness, which was really an admirable one; so the following device was hit upon. Fourreau himself cut a number of stencil plates in brown paper, and, provided with them, an army of Childebertians started every night in various directions, Fourreau and a few undoubtedly clever youths heading the detachments, and filling in the blanks by hand.

Meanwhile summer had come, and with it the longing among the young Tintos to breathe the purer air of the country, to sniff the salt breezes of the ocean. As a matter of course, they were not all ready to start at the same time, but being determined to follow the same route, to assemble at a common goal, the contingent that was to leave a fortnight later than the first arranged to join the others wherever they might be.

"But how?" was the question of those who were left behind. "Very simply indeed," was the answer; "we'll go by the Barrière d'Italie. You'll have but to look at the walls along the road, and you'll find your waybill."

So said, so done. A fortnight after, the second division left head-quarters and made straight for the Barrière d'Italie. But when outside the gates they stood undecided. For one moment only. The next they caught sight of a magnificent Bouginier on a wall next to the excise office—of a Bouginier whose outstretched index pointed to the Fontainebleau road. After that, all went well. As far as Marseilles their Bouginier no more failed them than the clouds of smoke and fire failed the Israelites in the wilderness. At the seaport town they lost the track for a little while, rather through their want of faith in the ingenuity of their predecessors than through the latter's lack of such ingenuity. They had the Mediterranean in front of them, and even if they found a Bouginier depicted somewhere on the shore, his outstretched index could only point to the restless waves; he could do nothing more definite. Considerably depressed, they were going down the Cannebière, when they caught sight of the features of their guiding star on a panel between the windows of a shipping office. His outstretched index did not point this time; it was placed over a word, and that word spelt "Malta." They took ship as quickly as possible for the ancient habitation of the Knights-Templars. On the walls of the Customs in the island was Bouginier, with a scroll issuing from his nostrils, on which was inscribed the word "Alexandria." A similar indication met their gaze at the Pyramids, and at last the second contingent managed to come up with the first amidst the ruins of Thebes at the very moment when the word "Suez" was being traced as issuing from Bouginier's mouth.

Among the company was a young fellow of the name of Berthier, who became subsequently an architect of some note. The Passage du Caire, as I have already observed, was in those days the head-quarters of the lithographic-printing business in general, but there was one branch which flourished more than the rest, namely, that of lettres de faire part,[1] menus of restaurants and visiting-cards. The two first-named documents were, in common with most printed matter intended for circulation, subject to a stamp duty, but in the early days of the Second Empire Louis-Napoléon had it taken off. To mark their sense of the benefit conferred, the lithographic firms [2] determined to have the arcade, which stood in sad need of repair, restored, and Berthier was selected for the task. The passage was originally built to commemorate Bonaparte's victories in Egypt, and when Berthier received the commission, he could think of no more fitting façade than the reproduction of a house at Karnac. He fondly remembered his youthful excursion to the land of Pharaohs, and at the same time the image of Bouginier uprose before him. That is why the presentment of the latter may be seen up to this day on the frieze of a building in the frowsiest part of Paris.

If I have dwelt somewhat longer on Bouginier than the importance of the subject warranted, it was mainly to convey an idea of the spirit of mischief, of the love of practical joking, that animated most of the inmates of "La Childebert." As a rule their devilries were innocent enough. The pictorial persecution of Bouginier is about the gravest thing that could be laid to their charge, and the victim, like the sensible fellow he was, rather enjoyed it than otherwise. Woe, however, to the starched bourgeois who had been decoyed into their lair, or even to the remonstrating comrade with a serious turn of mind, who wished to pursue his studies in peace! His life was made a burden to him, for the very building lent itself to all sorts of nocturnal surprises and of guerilla sorties. Elsewhere, when a man's door was shut, he might reasonably count upon a certain amount of privacy; the utmost his neighbours could do was to make a noise overhead or by his side. At the "Childebert" such privacy was out of the question. There was not a door that held on its hinges, not a window that could be opened or shut at will, not a ceiling that did not threaten constantly to crush you beneath its weight, not a floor that was not in danger of giving way beneath you and landing you in the room below, not a staircase that did not shake under your very steps, however light they might be; in short, the place was a wonderful illustration of "how the rotten may hold together," even if it be not gently handled.

The origin of the structure, as it stood then, was wrapt in mystery. It was five or six stories high, and must have attained that altitude before the first Revolution, because the owner, a Madame Legendre, who bought it for assignats amounting in real value to about one pound sterling, when the clergy's property was sold by the nation, was known never to have spent a penny upon it either at the time of the purchase or subsequently, until she was forced by a tenant more ingenious or more desperate than the rest. That it could not have been part of the abbey and adjacent monastery built by Childebert I., who was buried there in 558, was very certain. It is equally improbable that the Cardinal de Bissy, who opened a street upon the site of the erstwhile abbey in the year of Louis XIV.'s death, would have erected so high a pile for the mere accommodation of the pensioners of the former monastery, at a time when high piles were the exception. Besides, the Nos. 1 and 3, known to have been occupied by those pensioners, all of whose rooms communicated with one another, were not more than two stories high. In short, the original intention of the builder of the house No. 9, yclept "La Childebert," has never been explained. The only tenant in the Rue Childebert who might have thrown a light on the subject had died before the caravansary attained its fame. He was more than a hundred years old, and had married five times. His fifth wife was only eighteen when she became Madame Chanfort, and survived him for many, many years. She was a very worthy soul, a downright providence to the generally impecunious painters, whom she used to feed at prices which even then were ridiculously low. Three eggs, albeit fried in grease instead of butter, for the sum of three-half-pence, and a dinner, including wine, for sixpence, could not have left much profit; but Madame Chanfort always declared that she had enough to live upon, and that she supplied the art-students with food at cost price because she would not be without their company. At her death, in '57, two years before the "Childebert" and the street of the same name disappeared, there was a sale of her chattels, and over a hundred portraits and sketches of her, "in her habit as she lived," came under the hammer. To show that the various occupants of "La Childebert" could do more than make a noise and play practical jokes, I may state that not a single one of these productions fetched less than fifty francs—mere crayon studies; while there were several that sold for two hundred and three hundred francs, and two studies in oil brought respectively eight hundred francs and twelve hundred francs. Nearly every one of the young men who had signed these portraits had made a name for himself. The latter two were signed respectively Paul Delaroche and Tony Johannot.

Nevertheless, to those whose love of peace and quietude was stronger than their artistic instincts and watchful admiration of budding genius, the neighbourhood of "La Childebert" was a sore and grievous trial. At times the street itself, not a very long or wide one, was like Pandemonium let loose; it was when there was an "At Home" at "La Childebert," and such functions were frequent, especially at the beginning of the months. These gatherings, as a rule, partook of the nature of fancy dress conversaziones; for dancing, owing to the shakiness of the building, had become out of the question, even with such dare-devils as the tenants. What the latter prided themselves upon most was their strict adherence to the local colour of the periods they preferred to resuscitate. Unfortunately for the tranquillity of the neighbourhood, they pretended to carry out this revival in its smallest details, not only in their artistic productions, but in their daily lives. The actor who blacked himself all over to play Othello was as nothing to them in his attempted realism, because we may suppose that he got rid of his paint before returning to the everyday world. Not so the inmates of "La Childebert." They were minstrels, or corsairs, or proud and valiant knights from the moment they got up till the moment they went to bed, and many of them even scorned to stretch their weary limbs on so effeminate a contrivance as a modern mattress, but endeavoured to keep up the illusion by lying on a rush-bestrewn floor.

I am not sufficiently learned to trace these various and succeeding disguises to their literary and theatrical causes, for it was generally a new book or a new play that set the ball rolling in a certain direction; nor can I vouch for the chronological accuracy and completeness of my record in that respect, but I remember some phases of that ever-shifting masquerade. When I was a very little boy, I was struck more than once with the sight of young men parading the streets in doublets, trunk hose, their flowing locks adorned with velvet caps and birds' wings, their loins girded with short swords. And yet it was not carnival time. No one seemed to take particular notice of them; the Parisians by that time had probably got used to their vagaries. Those competent in such matters have since told me that the "get-up" was inspired by "La Gaule Poétique" of M. de Marchangy, the novels of M. d'Arlincourt, and the kindred stilted literature that characterized the beginning of the Restoration. Both these gentlemen, from their very hatred of the Greeks and Romans of the first Empire, created heroes of fiction still more ridiculous than the latter, just as Metternich, through his weariness of the word "fraternity," said that if he had a brother he would call him "cousin." A few years later, the first translation of Byron's works produced its effect; and then came Defauconpret, with his very creditable French versions of Walter Scott. The influence of Paul Delaroche and his co-champions of the cause of romanticism, the revolution of July, the dramas of Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo, all added their quota to the prevailing confusion in the matter of style and period, and early in the forties there were at the "Childebert" several camps, fraternizing in everything save in their dress and speech, which were the visible and audible manifestation of their individual predilection for certain periods of history. For instance, it was no uncommon thing to hear the son of a concierge, whose real or fancied vocation had made him embrace the artistic profession, swear by "the faith of his ancestors," while the impoverished scion of a noble house replied by calling him "a bloated reminiscence of a feudal and superstitious age."

At the conversaziones which I mentioned just now, the guests of the inmates of "La Childebert" not only managed to out-Herod Herod in diction and attire, but, to heighten illusion still further, adopted as far as possible the mode of conveyance supposed to have been employed by their prototypes. The classicists, and those still addicted to the illustration of Greek and Roman mythology, though nominally in the minority at the "Childebert" itself, were, as a rule, most successful in those attempts. The ass that had borne Silenus, the steeds that had drawn the chariot of the triumphant Roman warrior, the she-goat that was supposed to have suckled Jupiter, were as familiar to the inhabitants of the Rue Childebert as the cats and mongrels of their own households. The obstructions caused by the former no longer aroused their ire; but when, one evening, Romulus and Remus made their appearance, accompanied by the legendary she-wolf, they went mad with terror. The panic was at its height when, with an utter disregard of mythological tradition, Hercules walked up the street, leading the Nemæan lion. Then the aid of the police was invoked; but neither the police nor the national guards, who came after them, dared to tackle the animals, though they might have done so safely, because the supposed wolf was a great dane, and the lion a mastiff, but so marvellously padded and painted as to deceive any but the most practised eye. The culprits, however, did not reveal the secret until they were at the commissary of police's office, enjoying the magnificent treat of setting the whole of the neighbourhood in an uproar on their journey thither, and of frightening that official on their arrival.

In fact, long before I knew them, the inmates of the "Childebert" had become a positive scourge to the neighbourhood, while the structure itself threatened ruin to everything around it. Madame Legendre absolutely refused to do any repairs. She did not deny that she had bought the place cheap, but she pointed out at the same time that the rents she charged were more than modest, and that eight times out of ten she did not get them. In the beginning of her ownership she had employed a male concierge, to prevent, as it were, the wholesale flitting which was sure to follow a more strenuous application for arrears upon which she ventured now and then in those days. That was towards the end of the Empire, when the disciples of David had been reduced to a minority in the place by those of Lethière, who sounded the first note of revolt against the unconditional classicism of the illustrious member of the Convention. If all the disciples of the Creole painter had not his genius, most of them had his courage and readiness to draw the sword on the smallest provocation,[3] and the various Cerberi employed by Madame Legendre to enforce her claims had to fly one after another. The rumour of the danger of the situation had spread, and at last Madame Legendre could find no man to fill it, except on monetary conditions with which she would not—perhaps could not—comply. From that day forth she employed a woman, who was safe, because she had been told to let "lawless impecuniosity" take its course, and it was recorded that pecuniarily the proprietress was the better off for this change of tactics.

I am willing to repeat that record, which, if true, did credit to the head of the landlady and the hearts of her tenants, but am compelled to supplement it by a different version. When I saw the "Childebert" in '37 or '38, no man in his senses would have paid rent for any one room in it on the two top stories; he might as well have lived in the streets. It was an absolute case of the bottomless sedan chair in which two of his fellow-porters put Pat; "but for the honour of the thing, he might have walked." Consequently the tenants there were rarely harassed for their rent; if they paid it at all, it was so much unexpected gain. It happened, however, that now and then by mistake a youngster was put there who had scruples about discharging his liabilities in that respect; and one of these was Émile Lapierre, who subsequently became a landscape-painter of note. One night, after he had taken up his quarters there, the floodgates of heaven opened over Paris. Lapierre woke up amidst a deluge. I need not say that there were no bells at the "Childebert;" nevertheless there was no fear of dying unattended, provided one could shout, for there was always a party turning night into day, or hailing the smiling morn before turning in. Lapierre's shouts found a ready echo, and in a few moments the old concierge was on the spot.

"Go and fetch a boat—go and fetch a boat!" yelled Lapierre. "I am drowning!" yelled Lapierre.

"There are none in the quarter," replied the old woman innocently, thinking he was in earnest.

"Then go and fetch Madame Legendre, to show her the pond she is letting me instead of the room for which I pay her."

"Madame would not come, not even for you, monsieur, who are the only one punctual with your rent; besides, if she did come, she would have no repairs done."

"Oh, she'll have no repairs done! We'll soon find out. I think I'll make her," screamed Lapierre; and he kept his word.

It was the only instance of Madame Legendre having had to capitulate, and I have alluded to it before; it remains for me to tell how it was done.

Lapierre, contrary to the precept, allowed the sun to go down upon his wrath, in the hope perhaps of inducing Madame Legendre to change her oft-announced decision of doing no repairs; but he rose betimes next morning, and when there was no sign of workmen, he proceeded to carry out his plan. The floors of the "Childebert" were made of brick, and he simply removed three or four squares from his, after which he went downstairs and recruited half a dozen water-carriers, and bade them empty their full pails into the opening he had made. I shall probably have some remarks to make elsewhere about the water-supply of Paris; at present it is sufficient to say that in those days there was not a single house in the capital which was not dependent upon those Auvergnats who carried the commodity round in barrels on carts drawn by hand or horse. These gentlemen, though astonished at the strange task required of them, consented. In less than ten minutes there was a string of water-carts stationed in the Rue Childebert, and in a few minutes more the lower stories were simply flooded. Aimé Millet, the sculptor, whose room was situated immediately beneath that of Lapierre, was the first victim. It was he who gave the alarm, but, as a matter of course, in the twinkling of an eye there were one or two heads at every window, and though very early, there was a stampede of very primitively clad models (?) into the street, shouting and yelling out at the top of their voices. Outside no one seemed to know exactly what had occurred; the prevailing impression was that the place was on fire. Then Madame Legendre was sent for in hot haste. By that time the truth had become known in the house. The alarm had subsided, but not the noise. When the report of Madame Legendre's coming got wind, a deputation went to the entrance of the street to welcome her. It was provided with all sorts of instruments except musical ones, and the old dame was conducted in state to Millet's room. The cause of the mischief was soon ascertained, for the water-carriers were still at work. The police had refused to interfere; in reality, they would not have been sorry to see the building come down with a crash, for it was as great a source of annoyance to them as to the peaceful burghers they were supposed to protect. A move was made to the room above, where Lapierre—without a stitch of clothing—stood directing the operations.

"What are you doing, Monsieur Lapierre?" screeched Madame Legendre.

"I am taking a bath, madame; it is very warm. You gave me one against my will the night before last; and lest I should be accused of selfishness, I am letting my neighbours partake of the pleasure."

That is how Madame Legendre was compelled to repair the roof of "La Childebert."

Such was the company amidst which I was introduced by the son of my old tutor. Many years have passed since then, during which I have been thrown into the society of the great and powerful ones of this world, rather through the force of circumstances than owing to my own merits, but I have looked in vain for the honest friendships, the disinterested actions, the genuine enthusiasm for their art, underlying their devilry, of which these young men were capable. The bourgeois vices, in the guise of civic and domestic virtues, entered the souls of Frenchmen early in the reign of Louis-Philippe, and have been gnawing since, with ever-increasing force, like a cancer, at everything that was noble and worthy of admiration in a nation. But those vices never found their way to the hearts of the inmates of "La Childebert" while they were there, and rarely in after-life. Many attained world-wide reputations; few gathered riches, even when they were as frugal as the best among them—Eugène Delacroix.

To have known these young men was absolutely a liberal education. To the Podsnap and Philistine of no matter what nationality, it seems a sad thing to have no thought for to-morrow. And these youngsters had not even a thought for the day. Their thoughts were for the future, when the world mayhap would ring with their names; but their physical or mental hearing never strained for the ring of money. They were improvident creatures, to be sure; but how much more lovable than the young painters of the present period, whose ideal is a big balance at their bankers; who would rather have their names inscribed on the registers of the public debt than in the golden book of art; whose dreamt-of Eden is a bijou villa in the Parc Monceaux or in the Avenue Villiers; whose providence is the richard, the parvenu, the wealthy upstart, whose features they perpetuate, regardless of the perpetuation of their own budding fame!

When I began to jot down these notes, I made up my mind to eschew comparisons and moralizing; I find I have unconsciously done both, but will endeavour not to offend again. Still, I cannot help observing how the mere "moneyed nobody" rushes nowadays to the eminent painter to have his lineaments reproduced, when a guinea photograph would serve his purpose just as well for "family use;" for I take it that no one, besides his relations and friends, cares or will care to gaze upon his features. And yet our annual picture exhibitions are crowded with the portraits of these nonentities. They advertise themselves through the painters that transfer them to canvas, and the latter are content to pocket heavy fees, like the advertising agents they are. I am certain that neither Holbein, Rubens, Van Dyck, Hals, nor Rembrandt would have lent themselves to such transactions. When they, or a Reynolds, a Lawrence, a Gainsborough, conferred the honour of their brush upon some one, it was because he or she was already distinguished from his or her fellow-creatures by beauty, social position, talents, genius, or birth; not because he or she wanted to be, or, in default of such distinction, wanted to attract the public notice at all costs. That, I fancy, was the way in which painters of other days looked upon the thing. I know it was the way in which the young fellows at the "Childebert" did; and woe to their comrade who ventured to apply in art the principle of international maritime law, that "le pavillon couvre la marchandise" (the flag covers the cargo)! He was scouted and jeered at, and, moreover, rarely allowed to reap the pecuniary benefit of his artistic abasement. Hence the "patron for a portrait" seldom found his way to "La Childebert." When he did, the whole of the place conspired to make his life and that of his would-be protégé a misery.

To enumerate all the devices resorted to to make the sittings abortive, to "distort the features that had donned the bland smile of placid contentment" with the paralyzing fear of some impending catastrophe, would be impossible; the mention of a few must suffice. That most frequently employed, and comparatively easy of execution, was the setting alight of damp straw; the dense smoke penetrated every nook and cranny of the crazy building, and the sitter, mad with fright, rushed away. The chances were a hundred to one against his ever returning. Another was the intrusion of a male model offering his services as a Saint-Jérôme, or a female one offering hers as Godiva; for, curious to relate, the devotion of the wife of Leofric of Murcia was a favourite subject with the Childebertians. As a matter of course, the applicants were in the costume, or rather lack of costume, appropriate to the character. The strait-laced bourgeois or bourgeoise was shocked, and did not repeat the visit. The cry that there was a mad dog in the house was a common one on those occasions; and at last the would-be portrait-painters had to give in, and a big placard appeared on the frontispiece: "Le commerce des portraits a été cédé aux directeur et membres de l'École des Beaux-Arts."

The most curious thing in connection with the "Childebert" was that, though the place was inexpressibly ill kept, it escaped the most terrible visitations of the cholera. I prefer not to enter into details of the absolute disregard of all sanitary conditions, but in warm weather the building became positively uninhabitable. Long before the unsavoury spectacle of "learned fleas" became a feature of the suburban fairs, Émile Signol, who is best known as a painter of religious subjects, had trained a company of performers of a different kind of nocturnal pests. He averred in his opening lecture that their ingenuity was too great to remain unknown, and cited anecdotes fully proving his words. Certain is it that they were the only enemies before which the combined forces of the Childebertians proved powerless. But even under such trying circumstances the latter never lost their buoyant spirits, and their retreats en masse were effected in a manner the reports of which set the whole of Paris in a roar. One Sunday morning, the faithful worshippers, going to matins at the Church of St. Germain-des-Prés, found the square occupied by a troop of Bedouins, wrapt in their burnouses, and sleeping the sleep of the just. Some had squatted in corners, calmly smoking their chibouks. This was in the days of the Algerian campaign, and the rumour spread like wildfire that a party of Arab prisoners of war were bivouacked round the church, where a special service would be given in the afternoon as the first step to their conversion to Christianity. It being Sunday, the whole of Paris rushed to the spot. The Bedouins had, however, disappeared, but a collection was made in their behalf by several demure-looking young men. The Parisians gave liberally. That night, and two or three nights after, the nocturnal pests' occupation was gone, for the "Childebert" was lighted a giorno from basement to roof, and the Childebertians held high festival. The inhabitants of the streets adjacent to the Rue Childebert spent as many sleepless nights, though their houses were perfectly wholesome and clean.

I had the honour to be a frequent guest at those gatherings, but I feel that a detailed description of them is beyond my powers. I have already said that the craziness of the structure would have rendered extremely dangerous any combined display of choregraphic art, as practised by the Childebertians and their friends, male and female, at the neighbouring Grande-Chaumière; it did, however, not prevent a lady or gentleman of the company from performing a pas seul now and then. This, it must be remembered, was the pre-Rigolbochian period, before Chicard with his chahut had been ousted from his exalted position by the more elegant and graceful evolutions of the originator of the modern cancan, the famous Brididi; when the Faubourg du Temple, the Bal du Grand Saint-Martin, and "the descent of the Courtille" were patronized by the Paris jeunesse dorée, and in their halcyon days, when the habitués of the establishment of Le Père Lahire considered it their greatest glory to imitate as closely as possible the bacchanalian gyrations of the choregraphic autocrat on the other side of the Seine. No mere description could do justice to these gyrations; only a draughtsman of the highest skill could convey an adequate idea of them. But, as a rule, the soirées at the "Childebert" were not conspicuous for such displays; their programme was a more ambitious one from an intellectual point of view, albeit that the programme was rarely, if ever, carried out. This failure of the prearranged proceedings mainly arose from the disinclination or inability of the fairer portion of the company to play the passive part of listeners and spectators during the recital of an unpublished poem of perhaps a thousand lines or so, though the reciter was no less a personage than the author. In vain did the less frivolous and male part of the audience claim "silence for the minstrel;" the interrupters could conceive no minstrel without a guitar or some kindred instrument, least of all a minstrel who merely spoke his words, and the feast of reason and flow of soul came generally to an abrupt end by the rising of a damsel more outspoken still than her companions, who proposed an adjournment to one of the adjacent taverns, or to the not far distant "Grande-Chaumière," "si on continue à nous assommer avec des vers." The threat invariably produced its effect. The "minstrel" was politely requested to "shut up," and Béranger, Desaugiers, or even M. Scribe, took the place of the Victor Hugo in embryo until the small hours of the morning; the departure of the guests being witnessed by the night-capped inhabitants of the Rue Childebert from their windows, amidst the comforting reflections that for another three weeks or so there would be peace in the festive halls of that "accursed building."

My frequent visits to "La Childebert" had developed a taste for the Bohemian attractions of the Quartier-Latin. I was not twenty, and though I caught frequent glimpses at home of some of the eminent men with whom a few years later I lived on terms of friendship, I could not aspire to their society then. It is doubtful whether I would have done so if I could. I preferred the Théâtre Bobino to the Opéra and the Comédie-Française; the Grande-Chaumière—or the Chaumière, as it was simply called—to the most brilliantly lighted and decorated ball-room; a stroll with a couple of young students in the gardens of the Luxembourg to a carriage-drive in the Bois de Boulogne; a dinner for three francs at Magny's, in the Rue Contrescarpe-Dauphine, or even one for twenty-two sous at Viot's or Bléry's, to the most sumptuous repast at the Café Riche or the Café de Paris. I preferred the buttered rolls and the bowl of milk at the Boulangerie Crétaine, in the Rue Dauphine, to the best suppers at the Café Anglais, whither I had been taken once or twice during the Carnival—in short, I was very young and very foolish; since then I have often wished that, at the risk of remaining very foolish for evermore, I could have prolonged my youth for another score of years.

For once in a way I have no need to be ashamed of my want of memory. I could not give an account of a single piece I saw during those two or three years at Bobino, but I am certain that not one of the companions of my youth could. It is not because the lapse of time has dimmed the recollection of the plots, but because there were no plots, or at any rate none that we could understand, and I doubt very much whether the actors and actresses were more enlightened in that respect than the audience. The pieces were vaudevilles, most of them, and it was sufficient for us to join in the choruses of the songs, with which they were plentifully interlarded. As for the dialogue, it might have been sparkling with wit and epigram; it was nearly always drowned by interpolations from one side of the house or the other. When the tumult became too great, the curtain was simply lowered, to be almost immediately raised, "discovering" the manager—in his dressing-gown. He seemed prouder of that piece of attire than the more modern one would be of the most faultless evening dress. He never appealed to us by invoking the laws of politeness; he never threatened to have the house cleared. He simply pointed out to us that the police would inevitably close the place at the request of the inhabitants of the Rue de Madame if the noise rose above a certain pitch, and disturbed their peaceful evening hours, spent in the bosom of their families; which remark was always followed by the audience intoning as one man Gretry's "Où peut-on être mieux qu'au sein de sa famille?" the orchestra—such an orchestra!—playing the accompaniment, and the manager himself beating time. Then he went on. "Yes, messieurs et mesdames, we are here en famille also, as much en famille as at the Grande-Chaumière; and has not M. Lahire obtained from the Government the permission de faire sa police tout seul! After all, he is providing exercise for your muscles; I am providing food for your brain."

The speech was a stereotyped one—we all knew it by heart; it invariably produced its effect in keeping us comparatively quiet for the rest of the evening, unless a bourgeois happened to come in. Then the uproar became uncontrollable; no managerial speech could quell it until the intruder had left the theatre.

By a bourgeois was meant a man who wore broadcloth and a top hat, but especially the latter. In fact, that headgear was rarely seen within the inner precincts of the Quartier-Latin, even during the daytime, except on the head of a professor, or on Thursdays when the collegians—the term "lycéen" was not invented—were taken for their weekly outing. The semi-military dress of the present time had not been thought of then. The collegian wore a top hat, like our Eton boys, a white necktie, a kind of black quaker coat with a stand-up collar, a very dark blue waistcoat and trousers, low shoes, and blue woollen stockings. In the summer, some of them, especially those of the Collége Rollin, had a waistcoat and trousers of a lighter texture, and drab instead of blue. They were virtually prisoners within the walls of the college all the week, for in their Thursday promenades they were little more than prisoners taking exercise under the supervision of their gaolers. They were allowed to leave on alternate Sundays, provided they had parents, relations, or friends in Paris, who could come themselves or send their servants to fetch them in the morning and take them back at night. The rule applied to all, whether they were nine or double that number of years; it prevails even now. I only set foot in a French college of those days twice to see a young friend of mine, and I thanked my stars that four or five years of that existence had been spared to me. The food and the table appointments, the bedrooms—they were more like cells with their barred windows—would have been declined by the meanest English servant, certainly by the meanest French one. I have never met with a Frenchman who looks back with fond remembrance on his school-days.

The evening was generally wound up with a supper at Dagneaux's, Pinson's, or at the rôtisseuse—that is, if the evening happened to fall within the first ten days of the month; afterwards the entertainment nearly always consisted of a meat-pie, bought at one of the charcutiers', and washed down with the bottles of wine purchased at the Hôtel de l'Empereur Joseph II., at the south-eastern angle of the Rue de Tournon, where it stands still. The legend ran that the brother of Marie Antoinette had stayed there while on a visit to Paris, but it is scarcely likely that he would have done so while his sister was within a step of the throne of France; nevertheless the Count von Falkenstein—which was the name he adopted when travelling incognito—was somewhat of a philosopher. Did not he once pay a visit to Jean-Jacques Rousseau without having apprised him of his call? Jean-Jacques was copying music as the door opened to let in the visitor, and felt flattered enough, we may be sure; not so Buffon, whom Joseph surprised under similar circumstances, and who could never forgive himself for having been caught in his dressing-gown—he who never sat down to work except in lace ruffles and frill.

If I have been unwittingly betrayed into a semi-historical disquisition, it is because almost every step in that quarter gave rise to one, even amongst those light-hearted companions of mine, to the great astonishment of the fairer portion of the company. They only took an interest in the biography of one of the inhabitants of the street, whether past or present, and that was in the biography of Mdlle. Lenormand, a well-known fortune-teller, who lived at No. 5. They had heard that the old woman, who had been the mistress of Hébert of "Père Duchesne" fame, had, during the First Revolution, predicted to Joséphine de Beauharnais that she should be empress, as some gipsy at Grenada predicted a similar elevation to Eugénie de Montijo many years afterwards. Mdlle. Lenormand had been imprisoned after Hébert's death, but the moment Napoléon became first consul she was liberated, and frequently sent for to the Luxembourg, which is but a stone's throw from the Rue de Tournon. As a matter of course her fame spread, and she made a great deal of money during the first empire. Ignorant as they were of history, the sprightly grisettes of our days had heard of that; their great ambition was to get the five francs that would open the door of Mdlle. Lenormand's to them. Mdlle. Lenormand died about the year '43. Jules Janin, who lived in the same street, in the house formerly inhabited by Théroigne de Méricourt, went to the fortune-teller's funeral. The five francs so often claimed by the étudiante, so rarely forthcoming from the pockets of her admirer, was an important sum in those days among the youth of the Quartier-Latin. There were few whose allowance exceeded two hundred francs per month. A great many had to do with less. Those who were in receipt of five hundred francs—perhaps not two score among the whole number—were scarcely considered as belonging to the fraternity. They were called "ultrapontins," to distinguish them from those who from one year's end to another never crossed the river, except perhaps to go to one of the theatres, because there was not much to be seen at the Odéon during the thirties. With Harel's migration to the Porte St. Martin, the glory of the second Théâtre-Français had departed, and it was not until '41 that Lireux managed to revive some of its ancient fame. By that time I had ceased to go to the Quartier-Latin, but Lireux was a familiar figure at the Café Riche and at the divan of the Rue Le Peletier; he dined now and then at the Café de Paris. So we made it a point to attend every one of his first nights, notwithstanding the warnings in verse and in prose of every wit of Paris, Théophile Gautier included, who had written:

"On a fait là dessus mille plaisanteries,
Je le sais; il poussait de l'herbe aux galeries;
Trente-six variétés de champignons malsains
Dans les loges tigraient la mousse des coussins."

It was impossible to say anything very spiteful of a theatre which had remained almost empty during a gratuitous performance on the king's birthday; consequently while I frequented the Quartier-Latin the students gave it a wide berth. When they were not disporting themselves at Bobino, they were at the Chaumière, and not in the evening only. Notwithstanding the enthusiastic and glowing descriptions of it that have appeared in later days, the place was simple enough. There was a primitive shooting-gallery, a skittle-alley, and so forth, and it was open all day. The students, after having attended the lectures and taken a stroll in the gardens of the Luxembourg, repaired to the Chaumière, where, in fine weather, they were sure to find their "lady-loves" sitting at work demurely under the trees. The refreshments were cheap, and one spent one's time until the dinner hour, chatting, singing, or strolling about. The students were very clannish, and invariably remained in their own sets at the Chaumière. There were tables exclusively occupied by Bourguignons, Angevins, etc. In fact, life was altogether much simpler and more individual than it became later on.

One of our great treats was an excursion to the establishment of Le Père Bonvin, where the student of to-day would not condescend to sit down, albeit that the food he gets in more showy places is not half as good and three times as dear. Le Père Bonvin was popularly supposed to be in the country, though it was not more than a mile from the Barrière Montparnasse. The "country" was represented by one or two large but straggling plots of erstwhile grazing-lands, but at that time dotted with chalk-pits, tumble-down wooden shanties, etc. Such trees as the tract of "country" could boast were on the demesne of Père Bonvin, but they evidently felt out of their element, and looked the reverse of flourishing. The house of Père Bonvin was scarcely distinguished in colour and ricketiness from the neighbouring constructions, but it was built of stone, and had two stories. The fare was homely and genuine, the latter quality being no small recommendation to an establishment where the prolific "bunny" was the usual plat de résistance. For sophistication, where the rabbit was concerned, was part of the suburban traiteur's creed from time immemorial, and the fact of the former's head being visible in the dish was no guarantee as to that and the body by its side having formed one whole in the flesh. The ubiquitous collector of rags and bottles and rabbits' skins was always anxiously inquiring for the heads also, and the natural conclusion was that, thanks to the latter, stewed grimalkin passed muster as gibelotte. At Père Bonvin's no such suspicion could be entertained for one moment; the visitor was admitted to inspect his dinner while alive. Père Bonvin was essentially an honest man, and a character in his way. During the daytime he exercised the functions of garde-champêtre; at night he became the restaurateur.

In those days both his sons, François and Léon, were still at home, but the former had apparently already made up his mind not to follow in his sire's footsteps. He was a compositor by trade, but the walls of the various rooms showed plainly enough that he did not aim at the fame of an Aldine or an Elzevir, but at that of a Jan Steen or a Gerard Dow. He has fully maintained the promise given then. His pictures rank high in the modern French school; there are few of his contemporaries who have so thoroughly caught the spirit of the Dutch masters. Léon was a mere lad, but a good many among the habitués of Père Bonvin predicted a more glorious career for him than for his brother. The word "heaven-born musician" has been often misapplied; in Léon's instance it was fully justified. The predictions, however, were not realized. Whether from lack of confidence in his own powers, or deterred by the never-ceasing remonstrances of his father, Léon, unlike François, did not strike out for himself, but continued to assist in the business, only turning to his harmonium in his spare time, or towards the end of the evening, when all distinction between guests and hosts ceased to exist, and the whole made a very happy family. He married early. I lost sight of him altogether, until about '64 I heard of his tragic end. He had committed suicide.

CHAPTER II.

If these notes are ever published, the reader will gather from the foregoing that, unlike many Englishmen brought up in Paris, I was allowed from a very early age to mix with all sorts and conditions of men. As I intend to say as little as possible about myself, there is no necessity to reveal the reason of this early emancipation from all restraint, which resulted in my being on familiar terms with a great many celebrities before I had reached my twenty-first year. I had no claim on their goodwill beyond my admiration of their talents and the fact of being decently connected. The constant companion of my youth was hand and glove with some of the highest in the land, and, if the truth must be told, with a good many of the lowest; but the man who was seated at the table of Lord Palmerston at the Café de Paris at 8 p.m., could afford de s'encanailler at 2 a.m. next morning without jeopardizing his social status.

The Café de Paris in those days was probably not only the best restaurant in Paris, but the best in Europe. Compared to the "Frères Provençaux" Véfour and Véry, the Café de Paris was young; it was only opened on July 15, 1822, in the vast suite of apartments at the corner of the Rue Taitbout and Boulevard de Italiens, formerly occupied by Prince Demidoff, whose grandson was a prominent figure in the society of the Second Empire, and whom I knew personally. The grandfather died before I was born, or, at any rate, when I was very young; but his descendant often told me about him and his two sons, Paul and Anatole, both of whom, in addition to his vast wealth, inherited a good many of his eccentricities. The old man, like many Russian grand seigneurs, was never so happy as when he could turn his back upon his own country. He inhabited Paris and Florence in turns. In the latter place he kept in his pay a company of French actors, who were lodged in a magnificent mansion near to his own, and who enacted comedies, vaudevilles, and comic operas. The London playgoer may remember a piece in which the celebrated Ravel made a great sensation; it was entitled "Les Folies Dramatiques," and was founded upon the mania of the old man. For he was old before his time and racked with gout, scarcely able to set his feet to the ground. He had to be wheeled in a chair to his entertainments and theatre, and often fell into a dead faint in the middle of the performance or during the dinner. "It made no difference to his guests," said his grandson; "they wheeled him out as they had wheeled him in, and the play or repast went on as if nothing had happened." In fact, it would seem that the prince would have been very angry if they had acted otherwise, for his motto was that, next to enjoying himself, there was nothing so comfortable as to see others do so. Faithful to this principle, he always kept some one near, whose mission it was to enjoy himself at his expense. He was under no obligation whatsoever, except to give an account of his amusements, most frequently in the dead of the night, when he got home, because the old prince suffered from insomnia; he would have given the whole of his vast possessions for six hours' unbroken slumber.

I have an idea that the three generations of these Demidoffs were as mad as March hares, though I am bound to say, at the same time, that the form this madness took hurt no one. Personally, I only knew Prince Anatole, the second son of the old man, and Paul, the latter's nephew. Paul's father, of the same name, died almost immediately after his son's birth. He had a mania for travelling, and rarely stayed in the same spot for forty-eight hours. He was always accompanied by a numerous suite and preceded by a couple of couriers, who, nine times out of ten, had orders to engage every room in the hotel for him. Being very rich and as lavish as he was wealthy, few hotel proprietors scrupled to turn out the whole of their guests at his steward's bidding and at a moment's notice. Of course, people refused to put up with such cavalier treatment; but as remonstrance was of no avail, they often brought actions for damages, which they invariably gained, and were promptly settled by Boniface, who merely added them to Prince Paul's bill. The most comical part of the business, however, was that the prince as often as not changed his mind on arriving at the hotel, and without as much as alighting, continued his journey. The bill was never disputed. Another of his manias was that his wife should wash her hands each time she touched a metal object. For a while Princess Demidoff humoured her husband, but she found this so terribly irksome that she at last decided to wear gloves, and continued to do so long after her widowhood.

It must be obvious to the reader that this digression has little or no raison d'être, even in notes that do not profess to tell a succinct story; but my purpose was to a certain extent to vindicate the character of one of the most charming women of her time, who had the misfortune to marry what was undoubtedly the most eccentric member of the family. I am referring to Princess Anatole Demidoff, née Bonaparte, the daughter of Jérôme, and the sister of Plon-Plon.

To return to the Café de Paris and its habitués. First of all, the place itself was unlike any other restaurant of that day, even unlike its neighbour and rival, the Café Hardi, at the corner of the Rue Laffitte, on the site of the present Maison d'Or. There was no undue display of white and gold; and "the epicure was not constantly reminded that, when in the act of eating, he was not much superior to the rest of humanity," as Lord Palmerston put it when commenting upon the welcome absence of mirrors. The rooms might have been transformed at a moment's notice into private apartments for a very fastidious, refined family; for, in addition to the tasteful and costly furniture, it was the only establishment of its kind in Paris that was carpeted throughout, instead of having merely sanded or even polished floors, as was the case even in some of the best Paris restaurants as late as five and six years ago (I mean in the seventies)—Bignon, the Café Foy, and the Lion d'Or, in the Rue du Helder, excepted. The attendance was in every respect in thorough keeping with the grand air of the place, and, albeit that neither of the three or four succeeding proprietors made a fortune, or anything approaching it, was never relaxed.

On looking over these notes, I am afraid that the last paragraph will be intelligible only to a small section of my readers, consequently I venture to explain. Improved communication has brought to Paris during the third quarter of the century a great many Englishmen who, not being very familiar either with French or with French customs in their better aspect, have come to look upon the stir and bustle of the ordinary Paris restaurant, upon the somewhat free-and-easy behaviour of the waiters, upon their eccentricities of diction, upon their often successful attempts at "swelling" the total of the dinner-bill as so much matter of course. The abbreviated nomenclature the waiter employs in recapitulating the bill of fare to the patron is regarded by him as merely a skilful handling of the tongue by the native; the chances are ten to one in favour of the patron trying to imitate the same in his orders to the attendant, and deriving a certain pride from being successful. The stir and bustle is attributed to the more lively temperament of our neighbours, the free-and-easy behaviour as a wish on the waiter's part to smooth the linguistically thorny path of the benighted foreigner, the attempt to multiply items as an irrepressible manifestation of French greed.

Wherever these things occur, nowadays, the patron may be certain that he is "in the wrong shop;" but in the days of which I treat, the wrong shop was legion, especially as far as the foreigner was concerned; the Café de Paris and the Café Hardi were the notable exceptions. Truly, as Alfred de Musset said of the former, "you could not open its door for less than fifteen francs;" in other words, the prices charged were very high; but they were the same for the representatives of the nations that conquered as for those who were vanquished at Waterloo. It would be more correct to say that the personnel of the Café, from the proprietor and manager downward, were utterly oblivious of such distinctions of nationality. Every one who honoured the establishment was considered by them a grand seigneur, for whom nothing could be too good. I remember one day in '45 or '46—for M. Martin Guépet was at the head of affairs then—Balzac announcing the advent of a Russian friend, and asking Guépet to put his best foot forward. "Assuredly, monsieur, we will do so," was the answer, "because it is simply what we are in the habit of doing every day." The retort was sharp, but absolutely justified by facts. One was never told at the Café de Paris that this or that dish "could not be recommended," that "the fish could not be guaranteed." When the quality of the latter was doubtful, it did not make its appearance on the bill of fare. À propos of fish, there was a story current in the Café de Paris which may or may not have been the invention of one of the many clever literary men who foregathered there. It was to the effect that one of Guépet's predecessors—Angilbert the younger, I believe—had cast a doubt upon the historical accuracy of the facts connected with the tragic death of Vatel, the renowned chef of the Prince de Condé. According to Angilbert, Vatel did not throw himself upon his sword because the fish for Louis XIV.'s dinner had not arrived, but because it had arrived, been cooked, and was found "not to be so fresh as it might be." The elimination of those dishes would have disturbed the whole of the economy of the menu, and rather than suffer such disgrace Vatel made an end of himself. "For you see, monsieur," Angilbert is supposed to have said, "one can very well arrange a perfect dinner without fish, as long as one knows beforehand; but one cannot modify a service that has been thought out with it, when it fails at a moment's notice. As every one of my chefs is a treasure, who would not scruple to imitate the sacrifice of his famous prototype; and as I do not wish to expose him to such a heroic but inconvenient death, we take the certain for the uncertain, consequently doubtful fish means no fish."

Truth or fiction, the story accurately conveys the pride of the proprietors in the unsullied gastronomic traditions of the establishment, and there is no doubt that they were ably seconded in that respect by every one around them, even to the clientèle itself. Not a single one of the latter would have called the waiters by their names, nor would these have ventured to rehearse the names of the dishes in a kind of slang or mutilated French, which is becoming more frequent day by day, and which is at best but fit as a means of communication between waiters and scullions. Least of all, would they have numbered the clients, as is done at present. A gentleman sitting at table No. 5 was "the gentleman at table No. 5," not merely "number five." There was little need for the bellowing and shouting from one end of the room to the other, because the head waiter himself had an eye everywhere. The word "addition," which people think it good taste in the seventies and eighties to employ when asking for their bills, was never heard. People did not profess to know the nature of the arithmetical operation by which the total of their liabilities was arrived at; they left that to the cashier and the rest of the underlings.

No coal or gas was used in the Café de Paris: lamps and wood fires upstairs; charcoal, and only that of a peculiar kind, in the kitchens, which might have been a hundred miles distant, for all we knew, for neither the rattling of dishes nor the smell of preparation betrayed their vicinity. A charming, subdued hum of voices attested the presence of two or three score of human beings attending to the inner man; the idiotic giggle, the affected little shrieks of the shopgirl or housemaid promoted to be the companion of the quasi-man of the world was never heard there. The cabinet particulier was not made a feature of the Café de Paris, and suppers were out of the question. Now and then the frank laughter of the younger members of a family party, and that was all. As a rule, however, there were few strangers at the Café de Paris, or what are called chance customers, as distinct from periodical ones. But there were half a score of tables absolutely sacred from the invasion of no matter whom, such as those of the Marquis du Hallays, Lord Seymour, the Marquis de St. Cricq, M. Romieu, Prince Rostopchine, Prince Soltikoff, Dr. Véron, etc., etc. Lord Palmerston, when in Paris, scarcely ever dined anywhere else than at the Café de Paris—of course I mean when dining at a public establishment.

Almost every evening there was an interchange of dishes or of wines between those tables; for instance, Dr. Véron, of whom I will have a good deal to say in these notes, and who was very fond of Musigny vintage, rarely missed offering some to the Marquis du Hallays, who, in his turn, sent him of the finest dishes from his table. For all these men not only professed to eat well, but never to suffer from indigestion. Their gastronomy was really an art, but an art aided by science which was applied to the simplest dish. One of these was veau à la casserole, which figured at least three times a week on the bill of fare, and the like of which I have never tasted elsewhere. Its recuperative qualities were vouched for by such men as Alfred de Musset, Balzac, and Alexandre Dumas. The former partook of it whenever it was on the bill; the others often came, after a spell of hard work, to recruit their mental and bodily strength with it, and maintained that nothing set them up so effectually.

These three men were particularly interesting to me, and their names will frequently recur in these notes. I was very young, and, though perhaps not so enthusiastic about literature as I was about painting and sculpture, it would indeed have been surprising if I had remained indifferent to the fascination experienced by almost every one in their society: for let me state at once that the great poet, the great playwright, and the great novelist were even something more than men of genius; they were men of the world, and gentlemen who thought it worth their while to be agreeable companions. Unlike Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, and Eugène Sue, all of whom I knew about the same time, they did not deem it necessary to stand mentally aloof from ordinary mortals. Alfred de Musset and Alexandre Dumas were both very handsome, but each in a different way. With his tall, slim figure, auburn wavy hair and beard, blue eyes, and finely-shaped mouth and nose, De Musset gave one the impression of a dandy cavalry officer in mufti, rather than of a poet: the "Miss Byron" which Préault the sculptor applied to him was, perhaps, not altogether undeserved, if judged intellectually and physically at first sight. There was a feminine grace about all his movements. The "Confessions d'un Enfant du Siècle," his play, "Frédéric and Bernerette," were apt to stir the heart of women rather than that of men; but was it not perhaps because the majority of the strong sex cannot be stirred except with a pole? And the poet who was so sensitive to everything rough as to leave invariably the coppers given to him in exchange, was unlikely to take voluntarily to such an unwieldy and clumsy instrument to produce his effects.[4]

Throughout these notes, I intend to abstain carefully from literary judgments. I am not competent to enter into them; but, if I were, I should still be reluctant to do so in the case of Alfred de Musset, who, to my knowledge, never questioned the talent of any one. De Musset improved upon better acquaintance. He was apt to strike one at first as distant and supercilious. He was neither the one nor the other, simply very reserved, and at the best of times very sad, not to say melancholy. It was not affectation, as has been said so often; it was his nature. The charge of superciliousness arose from his distressing short-sightedness, which compelled him to stare very hard at people without the least intention of being offensive.

I have said that Balzac often came, after a spell of hard work, to recruit his forces with the veau à la casserole of the Café de Paris; I should have added that this was generally in the autumn and winter, for, at the end of the spring and during the summer, the dinner hour, seven, found Balzac still a prisoner at home. Few of his acquaintances and friends ever caught sight of him, they were often in total ignorance of his whereabouts, and such news as reached them generally came through Joseph Méry, the poet and novelist, the only one who came across him during those periods of eclipse. Méry was an inveterate gambler, and spent night after night at the card-table. He rarely left it before daybreak. His way lay past the Café de Paris, and for four consecutive mornings he had met Balzac strolling leisurely up and down, dressed in a pantalon à pieds (trousers not terminating below the ankle, but with feet in them like stockings), and frock coat with velvet facings. The second morning, Méry felt surprised at the coincidence; the third, he was puzzled; the fourth, he could hold out no longer, and asked Balzac the reason of these nocturnal perambulations round about the same spot. Balzac put his hand in his pocket and produced an almanack, showing that the sun did not rise before 3.40. "I am being tracked by the officers of the Tribunal de Commerce, and obliged to hide myself during the day; but at this hour I am free, and can take a walk, for as long as the sun is not up they cannot arrest me."

I remember having read that Ouvrard, the great army contractor, had done the same for many years; nevertheless, he was arrested one day,—the authorities proved that the almanack was wrong, that the sun rose ten minutes earlier than was stated therein. He brought an action against the compiler and publishers. They had to pay him damages.

Though literary remuneration was not in those days what it became later on, it was sufficiently large to make it difficult to explain the chronic impecuniosity of Balzac, though not that of Dumas. They were not gamblers, and had not the terrible fits of idleness or drinking which left De Musset stranded every now and again. Lamartine suffered from the same complaint, I mean impecuniosity. There is proof of Balzac's industry and frugality in two extracts from his letters to his mother, dated Angoulême, July, 1832, when he himself was thirty-two years old, and had already written half a dozen masterpieces. "Several bills are due, and, if I cannot find the money for them, I will have them protested and let the law take its course. It will give me breathing time, and I can settle costs and all afterwards."

Meanwhile he works eight hours a day at "Louis Lambert," one of the best things among his numberless best things. His mother sends him a hundred francs, and, perhaps with the same pen with which he wrote those two marvellous chapters that stand out like a couple of priceless rubies from among the mass of other jewels, he thanks her and accounts for them. "For the copying of the maps, 20 frs.; for my passport, 10 frs. I owed 15 frs. for discount on one of my bills, and 15 frs. on my fare. 15 frs. for flowers as a birthday present. Lost at cards, 10 frs. Postage and servant's tips, 15 frs. Total, 100 frs."

But these ten francs have not been lost at one fell swoop; they represent his bad luck at the gaming table during the whole month of his stay at Angoulême, at the house of his friend and sister's schoolfellow, Madame Zulma Carraud,—hence, something like seven sous (3-1/2d.) per day: for which extravagance he makes up, on his return to Paris, by plunging into work harder than ever. He goes to roost at 7 p.m., "like the fowls;" and he is called at 1 a.m., when he writes until 8 a.m. He takes another hour and a half of sleep, and, after partaking of a light meal, "gets into his collar" until four in the afternoon. After that, he receives a few friends, takes a bath, or goes out, and immediately he has swallowed his dinner he "turns in," as stated above. "I shall be compelled to lead this nigger's life for a few months without stopping, in order not to be swamped by those terrible bills that are due."

These extracts are not personal recollections. I have inserted them to make good my statement that Balzac was neither a gambler, a drunkard, nor an idler.

"How does he spend his money?" I asked Méry, when he had told us of his fourth meeting with Balzac on that very morning.

"In sops to his imagination, in balloons to the land of dreams, which balloons he constructs with his hard-won earnings and inflates with the essence of his visions, but which nevertheless will not rise three feet from the earth," he answered. Then he went on explaining: "Balzac is firmly convinced that every one of his characters has had, or has still, its counterpart in real life, notably the characters that have risen from humble beginnings to great wealth; and he thinks that, having worked out the secret of their success on paper, he can put it in practice. He embarks on the most harum-scarum speculations without the slightest practical knowledge; as, for instance, when he drew the plans for his country-house at the Jardies (Ville d'Avray), and insisted upon the builder carrying them out in every respect while he was away. When the place was finished there was not a single staircase. Of course, they had to put them outside, and he maintained that it was part of his original plan; but he had never given a thought to the means of ascent. But here is Monsieur Louis Lurine. If you would like an idea of Balzac's impracticability, let him tell you what occurred between Balzac and Kugelmann a few months ago."

Kugelmann was at that time publishing a very beautifully illustrated work, entitled "Les Rues de Paris," which Louis Lurine was editing. We were standing outside the Café Riche, and I knew Lurine by sight. Méry introduced me to him. After a few preliminary remarks, Lurine told us the following story. Of course, many years have elapsed since, but I think I can trust to my memory in this instance.

"I had suggested," said Lurine, "that Balzac should do the Rue de Richelieu, and we sent for him. I did not want more than half a sheet, so imagine my surprise when Balzac named his conditions, viz., five thousand francs, something over six hundred francs a page of about six hundred words. Kugelmann began to yell; I simply smiled; seeing which, Balzac said, as soberly as possible, 'You'll admit that, in order to depict a landscape faithfully, one should study its every detail. Well, how would you have me describe the Rue de Richelieu, convey an idea of its commercial aspect, unless I visit, one after the other, the various establishments it contains? Suppose I begin by the Boulevard des Italiens: I'd be bound to take my déjeûner at the Café Cardinal, I would have to buy a couple of scores at Brandus', a gun at the gunsmith's next door, a breastpin at the next shop. Could I do less than order a coat at the tailor's, a pair of boots at the bootmaker's?'

"I cut him short. 'Don't go any further,' I said, 'or else we'll have you in at "Compagnie des Indes," and, as both lace and Indian shawls have gone up in price, we'll be bankrupt before we know where we are.'

"Consequently," concluded Lurine, "the thing fell through, and we gave the commission to Guénot-Lacointe, who has done the thing very well and has written twice the pages Balzac was asked for, without buying as much as a pair of gloves."

When Balzac was not being harassed by the officials of the Tribunal de Commerce, he had to dodge the authorities of the National Guards, who generally had a warrant against him for neglect of duty. Unlike his great contemporary Dumas, Balzac had an invincible repugnance to play the amateur warrior—a repugnance, by-the-way, to which we owe one of the most masterly portraits of his wonderful gallery, that of the self-satisfied, bumptious, detestable bourgeoise, who struts about in his uniform; I am alluding to Crével of "La Cousine Bette." But civil discipline could take no cognizance of the novelist's likes and dislikes, and, after repeated "notices" and "warnings," left at his registered domicile, his incarceration was generally decided upon. As a rule, this happened about half a dozen times in a twelvemonth.

The next thing was to catch the refractory national guard, which was not easy, seeing that, in order to avoid an enforced sojourn at the Hôtel des Haricots,[5] Balzac not only disappeared from his usual haunts, but left his regular domicile, and took an apartment elsewhere under an assumed name. On one occasion, at a small lodgings which he had taken near his publisher, Hippolyte Souverain, under the name of Madame Dupont, Léon Gozlan, having found him out, sent him a letter addressed to "Madame Dupont, née Balzac."

The sergeant-major of Balzac's company had undoubtedly a grudge against him. He happened to be a perfumer, and ever since the publication and success of "César Birotteau" the Paris perfumers bore Balzac no goodwill. That particular one had sworn by all his essences and bottles that he would lay hands on the recalcitrant private of his company in the streets, for only under such conditions could he arrest him. To watch at Balzac's ordinary domicile was of no use, and, when he had discovered his temporary residence, he had to lure him out of it, because the other was on his guard.

One morning, while the novelist was hard at work, his old housekeeper, whom he always took with him, came to tell him that there was a large van downstairs with a case addressed to him. "How did they find me out here?" exclaimed Balzac, and despatched the dame to gather further particulars. In a few moments she returned. The case contained an Etruscan vase sent from Italy, but, seeing that it had been knocking about for the last three days in every quarter of Paris in the carman's efforts to find out the consignee, the former was anxious that M. Balzac should verify the intact condition of the package before it was unloaded. Balzac fell straight into the trap. Giving himself no time even to exchange his dressing-gown, or rather his monk's frock he was in the habit of wearing, for a coat, or his slippers for a pair of boots, he rushed downstairs, watching with a benign smile the carrier handling most delicately the treasure that had come to him.

"Caught at last," said a stentorian voice behind him, and dispelling the dream as its owner laid his hand on the novelist's shoulder, while a gigantic companion planted himself in front of the street door and cut off all retreat that way.

"With a refinement of cruelty, which in the eyes of posterity will considerably diminish the glory of his victory"—I am quoting Balzac's own words as he related the scene to us at the Hôtel des Haricots—the sergeant-major perfumer would not allow his prisoner to change his clothes, and while the van with the precious Etruscan vase disappeared in the distance, Balzac was hustled into a cab to spend a week in durance vile, where on that occasion he had the company of Adolphe Adam, the composer of "Le Postillon de Lonjumeau."

However, "les jours de fête étaient passés," and had been for the last five years, ever since the Hôtel des Haricots had been transferred from the town mansion of the De Bazancourts in the Rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain to its then locale near the Orléans railway station. There were no more banquets in the refectory as there had been of yore. Each prisoner had his meals in his cell. Joseph Méry, Nestor Roqueplan, and I were admitted as the clock struck two, and had to leave exactly an hour afterwards. It was during this visit that Balzac enacted the scene for us which I have endeavoured to describe above, and reminded Méry of the last dinner he had given to Dumas, Jules Sandeau, and several others in the former prison, which dinner cost five hundred francs. Eugène Sue, who was as unwilling as Balzac to perform his civic duties, had had three of his own servants to wait upon him there, and some of his plate and silver brought to his cell.

Seeing that the name of the celebrated author of "Les Mystères de Paris" has presented itself in the course of these notes, I may just as well have done with him, for he forms part of the least agreeable of my recollections. He was also an habitué of the Café de Paris. A great deal has been written about him; what has never been sufficiently insisted upon was the inveterate snobbishness of the man. When I first knew him, about '42-'43, he was already in the zenith of his glory, but I had often heard others mention his name before then, and never very favourably. His dandyism was offensive, mainly because it did not sit naturally upon him. It did not spring from an innate refinement, but from a love of show, although his father, who had been known to some of the son's familiars, was a worthy man, a doctor, and, it appears, a very good doctor, but somewhat brusque, like our own Abernethy; still much more of a gentleman at heart than the son. He did not like Eugène's extravagance, and when the latter, about '24, launched out into a cabriolet, he shipped him off on one of the king's vessels, as a surgeon; to which fact French literature owed the first novels of the future author of "Les Mystères de Paris" and "Le Juif-Errant."

But the father was gathered to his fathers, and Eugène, who had never taken kindly to a seafaring life, returned to Paris, to spend his inheritance and to resume his old habits, which made one of his acquaintances say that "le père and le fils had both entered upon a better life." It appears that, though somewhat of a poseur from the very beginning, he was witty and amusing, and readily found access to the circle that frequented the gardens of the Tivoli and the Café de Paris.[6] They, in their turn, made him a member of the Jockey Club when it was founded, which kindness they unanimously regretted, as will be seen directly.

The Tivoli gardens, though utterly forgotten at present, was in reality the birthplace of the French Jockey Club. About the year 1833 a man named Bryon, one of whose descendants keeps, at the hour I write, a large livery stables near the Grand Café, opened a pigeon-shooting gallery in the Tivoli; the pigeons, from what I have heard, mainly consisting of quails, larks, and other birds. The pigeons shot at were wooden ones, poised up high in the air, but motionless, as we still see them at the suburban fairs around Paris. Seven years before, Bryon had started a "society of amateurs of races," to whom, for a certain consideration, he let a movable stand at private meetings, for there were no others until the Society for the Encouragement of breeding French Horses started operations in 1834. But the deliberations at first took place at Bryon's place in the Tivoli gardens, and continued there until, one day, Bryon asked the fourteen or fifteen members why they should not have a locale of their own; the result was that they took modest quarters in the Rue du Helder, or rather amalgamated with a small club located there under the name of Le Bouge (The Den); for Lord Seymour, the Duke de Nemours, Prince Demidoff, and the rest were sufficiently clear-sighted to perceive that a Jockey Club governed on the English principle was entirely out of the question. That was the origin of the French Jockey Club, which, after various migrations, is, at the time of writing, magnificently housed in one of the palatial mansions of the Rue Scribe. As a matter of course, some of the fashionable habitués of the Café de Paris, though not knowing a fetlock from a pastern, were but too pleased to join an institution which, with the mania for everything English in full swing, then conferred as it were upon its members a kind of patent of "good form," and, above all, of exclusiveness, for which some, even amidst the fleshpots of the celebrated restaurant, longed. Because, it must be remembered, though the majority of the company at the Café de Paris were very well from the point of view of birth and social position, there was no possibility of excluding those who could lay no claim to such distinctions, provided they had the money to pay their reckoning, and most of them had more than enough for that. It appears that Eugène Sue was not so objectionable as he became afterwards, when the wonderful success of his "Mystères de Paris" and the "Juif-Errant" had turned his head; he was made an original member of the club. Election on the nomination by three sponsors was not necessary then. That article was not inserted in the rules until two years after the foundation of the Paris Jockey Club.

Of the success attending Sue's two best-known works, I can speak from personal experience; for I was old enough to be impressed by it, and foolish enough to rank him, on account of it, with Balzac and Dumas, perhaps a little higher than the former. After the lapse of many years, I can only console myself for my infatuation with the thought that thousands, of far greater intellectual attainments than mine, were in the same boat, for it must not be supposed that the furore created by "Les Mystères de Paris" was confined to one class, and that class the worst educated one. While it appeared in serial form in the Débats, one had to bespeak the paper several hours beforehand, because, unless one subscribed to it, it was impossible to get it from the news-vendors. As for the reading-rooms where it was supposed to be kept, the proprietors frankly laughed in your face if you happened to ask for it, after you had paid your two sous admission. "Monsieur is joking. We have got five copies, and we let them out at ten sous each for half an hour: that's the time it takes to read M. Sue's story. We have one copy here, and if monsieur likes to take his turn he may do so, though he will probably have to wait for three or four hours."

At last the guileless demoiselle behind the counter found even a more effective way of fleecing her clients. The cabinets de lecture altered their fees, and the two sous, which until then had conferred the right of staying as long as one liked, were transformed into the price of admission for one hour. Each reader received a ticket on entering, stating the time, and the shrewd caissière made the round every ten minutes. I may say without exaggeration that the days on which the instalment of fiction was "crowded out," there was a general air of listlessness about Paris. And, after the first few weeks, this happened frequently; for by that time the Bertins had become quite as clever as their formidable rival, the proprietor and editor of the Constitutionnel, the famous Dr. Véron, whom I have already mentioned, but of whom I shall have occasion to speak again and again, for he was one of the most notable characters in the Paris of my early manhood. But to return for a moment to "Les Mystères de Paris" and its author.

The serial, then, was frequently interrupted for one or two days, without notice, however, to the readers; on its resumption there was a nice little paragraph to assure the "grandes dames de par le monde," as well as their maids, with regard to the health of M. Sue, who was supposed to have been too ill to work. The public took all this au grand sérieux. They either chose to forget, or were ignorant of the fact, that a novel of that kind, especially in the early days of serial feuilleton, was not delivered to the editor bit by bit. Sue, great man as he was, would not have dared to inaugurate the system only adopted somewhat later by Alexandre Dumas the Elder, namely, that of writing "from hand to mouth." These paragraphs served a dual purpose—they whetted the lady and other readers' interest in the author, and informed the indifferent ones how great that interest was. For these paragraphs were, or professed to be,—I really believe they were,—the courteous replies to hundreds of kind inquiries which the author "could not acknowledge separately for lack of time."

But this was not all. There was really a good excuse for Eugène Sue "se prenant au sérieux," seeing that some of the most eminent magistrates looked upon him in that light and opened a correspondence with him, submitting their ideas about reforming such criminals as "le maître d'école," and praising Prince Rodolph, or rather Eugène Sue under that name, for "his laudable efforts in the cause of humanity." In reality, Sue was in the position of Molière's "bourgeois gentilhomme" who spoke prose without being aware of it; for there was not the smallest evidence from his former work that he intended to inaugurate any crusade, either socialistic or philanthropic, when he began his "Mystères de Paris." He simply wanted to write a stirring novel. But, unlike M. Jourdain, he did not plead ignorance of his own good motives when congratulated upon them. On the contrary, he gravely and officially replied in the Débats without winking. Some of the papers, not to be outdone, gravely recounted how whole families had been converted from their evil ways by the perusal of the novel; how others, after supper, had dropped on their knees to pray for their author; how one working man had exclaimed, "You may say what you like, it would be a good thing if Providence sent many men like M. Sue in this world to take up the cudgels of the honest and struggling artisan." Thereupon Béranger, who did not like to be forgotten in this chorus of praise, paid a ceremonious visit to Sue, and between the two they assumed the protectorship of the horny-handed son of toil.

It must not be supposed that I am joking or exaggerating, and that the engoûment was confined to the lower classes, and to provincial and metropolitan faddists. Such men as M. de Lourdoueix, the editor of the Gazette de France, fell into the trap. I have pointed out elsewhere that the republicans and socialists of those days were not necessarily godless folk, and M. de Lourdoueix fitly concluded that a socialistic writer like Sue might become a powerful weapon in his hands against the Jesuits. So he went to the novelist, and gave him a commission to that effect. The latter accepted, and conceived the plot of "The Wandering Jew." When it was sketched out, he communicated it to the editor; but whether that gentleman had reconsidered the matter in the interval, or whether he felt frightened at the horribly tragic conception with scarcely any relief, he refused the novel, unless it was modified to a great extent and its blood-curdling episodes softened. The author, taking himself au sérieux this time as a religious reformer, declined to alter a line. Dr. Véron got wind of the affair, bought the novel as it stood, and, by dint of a system of puffing and advertising which would even make a modern American stare, obtained a success with it in the Constitutionnel which equalled if it did not surpass that of the Débats with the "Mystères."

"It is very amusing indeed," said George Sand one night, "but there are too many animals. I hope we shall soon get out of this ménagerie." Nevertheless, she frankly admitted that she would not like to miss an instalment for ever so much.

Meanwhile Sue posed and posed, not as a writer—for, like Horace Walpole, he was almost ashamed of the title—but as "a man of the world" who knew nothing about literature, but whose wish to benefit humanity had been greater than his reluctance to enter the lists with such men as Balzac and Dumas. After his dinner at the Café de Paris, he would gravely stand on the steps smoking his cigar and listen to the conversation with an air of superiority without attempting to take part in it. His mind was supposed to be far away, devising schemes for the social and moral improvement of his fellow-creatures. These philanthropic musings did not prevent him from paying a great deal of attention—too much perhaps—to his personal appearance, for even in those days of beaux, bucks, and dandies, of Counts d'Orsay and others, men could not help thinking Eugène Sue overdressed. He rarely appeared without spurs to his boots, and he would no more have done without a new pair of white kid gloves every evening than without his dinner. Other men, like Nestor de Roqueplan, Alfred de Musset, Major Fraser, all of whose names will frequently recur in these notes, did not mind having their gloves cleaned, though the process was not so perfect as it is now; Eugène Sue averred that the smell of cleaned gloves made him ill. Alfred de Musset, who could be very impertinent when he liked, but who was withal a very good fellow, said one day: "Mais enfin, mon ami, ça ne sent pas pire que les bouges que vous nous dépeignez. N'y seriez vous jamais allé?"

In short, several years before the period of which I now treat, Eugène Sue had begun to be looked upon coldly at the Jockey Club on account of the "airs he gave himself;" and three years before the startling success of his work, he had altogether ceased to go there, though he was still a member, and remained so nominally until '47, when his name was removed from the list in accordance with Rule 5. Owing to momentary pecuniary embarrassments, he had failed to pay his subscription. It may safely be asserted that this was merely a pretext to get rid of him, because such stringent measures are rarely resorted to at any decent club, whether in London or Paris, and least of all at the Jockey Clubs there. The fact was, that the members did not care for a fellow-member whose taste differed so materially from their own, whose daily avocations and pursuits had nothing in common with theirs; for though Eugène Sue as early as 1835 had possessed a race-horse, named Mameluke, which managed to come in a capital last at Maisons-sur-Seine (afterwards Maisons-Lafitte); though he had ridden his haque every day in the Bois, and driven his cabriolet every afternoon in the Champs-Élysées, the merest observer could easily perceive that all this was done for mere show, to use the French expression, "pose." As one of the members observed, "M. Sue est toujours trop habillé, trop carossé, et surtout trop éperonné."

M. Sue was all that, and though the Jockey Club at that time was by no means the unobtrusive body of men it is to-day, its excesses and eccentricities were rarely indulged in public, except perhaps in carnival time. A M. de Chateau-Villard might take it into his head to play a game of billiards on horseback, or M. de Machado might live surrounded by a couple of hundred parrots if he liked; none of these fancies attracted the public's notice: M. Sue, by his very profession, attracted too much of it, and brought a great deal of it into the club itself; hence, when he raised a violent protest against his expulsion and endeavoured to neutralize it by sending in his resignation, the committee maintained its original decision. A few years after this, Eugène Sue disappeared from the Paris horizon.

CHAPTER III.

Among my most pleasant recollections of those days are those of Alexandre Dumas. To quote his own words, "whenever he met an Englishman he considered it his particular duty to make himself agreeable to him, as part of the debt he owed to Shakespeare and Walter Scott." I doubt whether Dumas ever made himself deliberately disagreeable to any one; even when provoked, he managed to disarm his adversary with an epigram, rather than wound him. One evening, a professor at one of the provincial universities had been dining at the Café de Paris, as the guest of Roger de Beauvoir. He had a magnificent cameo breastpin. It elicited the admiration of every one, and notably that of Dumas. He said at once that it was a portrait of Julius Cæsar.

"Are you an archæologist?" asked the professor.

"I," replied Dumas, "I am absolutely nothing."

"Still," insisted the visitor, "you perceived at once that it was a portrait of Julius Cæsar."

"That is not very wonderful. Cæsar is essentially a Roman type; and, besides, I know Cæsar as well as most people, and perhaps better."

To tell a professor of history—especially a provincial one—that one knows Cæsar as well as most people and perhaps better, is naturally to provoke the question, "In what capacity?" As a matter of course the question followed immediately.

"In the capacity of Cæsar's historian," said Dumas imperturbably.

We were getting interested, because we foresaw that the professor would, in a few minutes, get the worst of it. Dumas' eyes were twinkling with mischief.

"You have written a history of Cæsar?" asked the learned man.

"Yes; why not?"

"Well, you won't mind my being frank with you: it is because it has never been mentioned in the world of savans."

"The world of savans never mentions me."

"Still, a history of Cæsar ought to make somewhat of a sensation."

"Mine has not made any. People read it, and that was all. It is the books which it is impossible to read that make a sensation: they are like the dinners one cannot digest; the dinners one digests are not as much as thought of next morning." That was Dumas' way of putting a would-be impertinent opponent hors de combat, and his repartees were frequently drawn from the pursuit he loved as well, if not better than literature, namely, cooking. It may sound exaggerated, but I verily believe that Dumas took a greater pride in concocting a stew than in constructing a novel or a play. Very often, in the middle of the dinner, he would put down his knife and fork. "Ça, c'est rudement bon: il faut que je m'en procure la recette." And Guépet was sent for to authorize Dumas to descend to the lower regions and have a consultation with his chefs. He was the only one of the habitués who had ever been in the kitchens of the Café de Paris. As a rule these excursions were followed by an invitation to dine at Dumas' two or three days hence, when the knowledge freshly acquired would be put into practice.

There were few of us who questioned Dumas' literary genius; there were many who suspected his culinary abilities, and notably among them, Dr. Véron. The germs of this unbelief had been sown in the doctor's mind by his own cordon-bleu, Sophie. The erstwhile director of the opera lived, at that time, in a beautiful apartment on the first floor of a nice house in the Rue Taitbout, at the corner of which the Café de Paris was situated. Sophie had virtually a sinecure of it, because, with the exception of a dinner-party now and then, her master, who was a bachelor, took his dinners at the restaurant. And with regard to the déjeûner, there was not much chance of her displaying her talents, because the man, who was reputed to be a very Apicius, was frugality itself. His reasons for dining out instead of at home were perfectly logical, though they sounded paradoxical. One day, when I was remarking upon the seemingly strange habit of dining out, when he was paying "a perfect treasure" at home, he gave me these reasons. "My dear friend, depend upon it that it is man's stomach which found the aphorism, 'Qui va piano va sano, qui va sano va lontano.' In your own home the soup is on the table at a certain hour, the roast is taken off the jack, the dessert is spread out on the sideboard. Your servants, in order to get more time over their meals, hurry you up; they do not serve you, they gorge you. At the restaurant, on the contrary, they are never in a hurry, they let you wait. And, besides, I always tell the waiters not to mind me; that I like being kept a long while—that is one of the reasons why I come here.

"Another thing, at the restaurant the door is opened at every moment and something happens. A friend, a chum, or a mere acquaintance comes in; one chats and laughs: all this aids digestion. A man ought not to be like a boa-constrictor, he ought not to make digestion a business apart. He ought to dine and to digest at the same time, and nothing aids this dual function like good conversation. Perhaps the servant of Madame de Maintenon, when the latter was still Madame Scarron, was a greater philosopher than we suspect when he whispered to his mistress, 'Madame, the roast has run short; give them another story.'

"I knew a philanthropist," wound up Dr. Véron, "who objected as much to be hurried over his emotions as I object to be hurried over my meals. For that reason he never went to the theatre. When he wanted an emotional fillip, he wandered about the streets until he met some poor wretch evidently hungry and out of elbows. He took him to the nearest wine-shop, gave him something to eat and to drink, sat himself opposite to his guest, and told him to recount his misfortunes. 'But take your time over it. I am not in a hurry,' he recommended. The poor outcast began his tale; my friend listened attentively until he was thoroughly moved. If the man's story was very sad, he gave him a franc or two; if it was positively heart-rending and made him cry, he gave him a five-franc piece; after which, he came to see me, saying, 'I have thoroughly enjoyed myself, and made the intervals between each sensational episode last as long as I liked, and, what is more, it has just cost me seven francs, the price of a stall at the theatre.'"

To return to Dr. Véron's scepticism with regard to Dumas' culinary accomplishments, and how he was converted. Dumas, it appears, had got the recipe for stewing carp from a German lady, and, being at that moment on very friendly terms with Dr. Véron, which was not always the case, had invited him and several others to come and taste the results of his experiments. The dish was simply splendid, and for days and days Véron, who was really a frugal eater, could talk of nothing else to his cook.

"Where did you taste it?" said Sophie, getting somewhat jealous of this praise of others; "at the Café de Paris?"

"No, at Monsieur Dumas'," was the answer.

"Well, then, I'll go to Monsieur Dumas' cook, and get the recipe."

"That's of no use," objected her master. "Monsieur Dumas prepared the dish himself."

"Well, then, I'll go to Monsieur Dumas himself and ask him to give me the recipe."

Sophie was as good as her word, and walked herself off to the Chaussée d'Antin. The great novelist felt flattered, and gave her every possible information, but somehow the dish was not like that her master had so much enjoyed at his friend's. Then Sophie grew morose, and began to throw out hints about the great man's borrowing other people's feathers in his culinary pursuits, just as he did in his literary ones. For Sophie was not altogether illiterate, and the papers at that time were frequently charging Dumas with keeping his collaborateurs too much in the background and himself too much in front. Dumas had never much difficulty in meeting such accusations, but Sophie had unconsciously hit upon the tactics of the clever solicitor who recommended the barrister to abuse the plaintiff, the defendant's case being bad, and she put it into practice. "C'est avec sa carpe comme avec ses romans, les autres les font et il y met son nom," she said one day. "Je l'ai bien vu, c'est un grand diable de vaniteux."

Now, there was no doubt about it, to those who did not know him very well, Dumas was "un grand diable de vaniteux;" and the worthy doctor sat pondering his cook's remarks until he himself felt inclined to think that Dumas had a clever chef in the background, upon whose victories he plumed himself. Meanwhile Dumas had been out of town for more than a month, but a day or so after his return he made his appearance at the Café de Paris, and, as a matter of course, inquired after the result of Sophie's efforts. The doctor was reticent at first, not caring to acknowledge Sophie's failure. He had, however, made the matter public, alleging, at the same time, Sophie's suspicions as to Dumas' hidden collaborateur, and one of the company was ill advised enough to let the cat out of the bag. During the many years of my acquaintance with Dumas, I have never seen him in such a rage as then. But he toned down in a very few minutes. "Il n'y a qu'une réponse à une accusation pareille," he said in a grandiloquent tone, which, however, had the most comical effect, seeing how trifling the matter was in reality—"il n'y qu'une réponse; vous viendrez dîner avec moi demain, vous choissirez un délégué qui viendra à partir de trois heures me voir préparer mon dîner." I was the youngest, the choice fell upon me. That is how my lifelong friendship with Dumas began. At three o'clock next day I was at the Chaussée d'Antin, and was taken by the servant into the kitchen, where the great novelist stood surrounded by his utensils, some of silver, and all of them glistening like silver. With the exception of a soupe aux choux, at which, by his own confession, he had been at work since the morning, all the ingredients for the dinner were in their natural state—of course, washed and peeled, but nothing more. He was assisted by his own cook and a kitchen-maid, but he himself, with his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, a large apron round his waist, and bare chest, conducted the operations. I do not think I have ever seen anything more entertaining, though in the course of these notes I shall have to mention frequent vagaries on the part of great men. I came to the conclusion that when writers insisted upon the culinary challenges of Carême, Dugléré, and Casimir they were not indulging in mere metaphor.

At half-past six the guests began to arrive; at a quarter to seven Dumas retired to his dressing-room; at seven punctually the servant announced that "monsieur était servi." The dinner consisted of the aforenamed soupe aux choux, the carp that had led to the invitation, a ragoût de mouton à la Hongroise, rôti de faisans, and a salade Japonaise. The sweets and ices had been sent by the patissier. I never dined like that before or after, not even a week later, when Dr. Véron and Sophie made the amende honorable in the Rue Taitbout.

I have spent many delightful evenings with all these men; I do not remember having spent a more delightful one than on the latter occasion. Every one was in the best of humours; the dinner was very fine; albeit that, course for course, it did not come up to Dumas'; and, moreover, during the week that had elapsed between the two entertainments, one of Dr. Véron's successors at the opera, Léon Pillet, had been served with the most ludicrous citation that was ever entered on the rolls of any tribunal. For nearly nineteen years before that period there had been several attempts to mount Weber's "Freyschutz," all of which had come to nought. There had been an adaptation by Castil-Blaze, under the title of "Robin des Bois," and several others; but until '41, Weber's work, even in a mutilated state, was not known to the French opera-goer. At that time, however, M. Émilien Paccini made a very good translation; Hector Berlioz was commissioned to write the recitatives, for it must be remembered that Weber's opera contains dialogue, and that dialogue is not admissible in grand opera. Berlioz acquitted himself with a taste and reverence for the composer's original scheme that did great credit to both; he sought his themes in Weber's work itself, notably in the "Invitation à la Valse;" but notwithstanding all this, the "Freyschutz" was miserably amputated in the performance lest it should "play" longer than midnight, though a ballet was added rather than deprive the public of its so-called due. Neither Paccini nor Berlioz had set foot in the opera-house since their objections to such a course had been overruled, and they made it known to the world at large that no blame attached to them; nevertheless, this quasi "Freyschutz" met with a certain amount of success. M. Pillet was rubbing his hands with glee at his own cleverness, until a Nemesis came in the shape of a visitor from the Fatherland, who took the conceit out of the director with one fell blow, and, what was worse still, with a perfectly legal one.

The visitor was no less a personage than Count Tyszkiewicz, one of the best musical critics of the time and the editor of the foremost musical publication in the world; namely, Die Musikalische Zeitung, of Leipzig. The count, having been attracted by the announcement of the opera on the bills, was naturally anxious to hear how French artists would acquit themselves of a work particularly German, and, having secured a stall, anticipated an enjoyable evening. But alack and alas! in a very little while his indignation at the liberties taken with the text and the score by the singers, musicians, and conductor got the upper hand, and he rushed off to the commissary of police on duty at the theatre to claim the execution of Weber's opera in its integrity, as promised on the bills, or the restitution of his money. Failing to get satisfaction either way, he required the commissary to draw up a verbatim report of his objections and his claim, determined to bring an action. Next morning, he sent a lithographed account of the transaction to all the papers, requesting its insertion, with which request not a single one complied. Finding himself baffled at every turn, he engaged lawyer and counsel and began proceedings.

It was at that stage of the affair that the dinner at Dr. Véron's took place. As a matter of course, the coming lawsuit gave rise to a great deal of chaff on the part of the guests, although the victim of this badinage and defendant in the suit was not there. It was his successor who took up the cudgels and predicted the plaintiff's discomfiture. "The counsel," said Roqueplan, "ought to be instructed to invite the president and assessors to come and hear the work before they deliver judgment: if they like it personally, they will not decide against Pillet; if they don't, they'll fall asleep and be ashamed to own it afterwards. But should they give a verdict for the plaintiff, Pillet ought to appeal on a question of incompetence; a person with the name of Tyszkiewicz has no right to plead in the interest of harmony."[7]

Among such a company as that gathered round Dr. Véron's table, a single sentence frequently led to a host of recollections. Scarcely had Roqueplan's suggestion to invite the president and assessors of the court to the performance of the "Freyschutz" been broached than our host chimed in: "I can tell you a story where the expedient you recommend was really resorted to, though it did not emanate from half as clever a man as you, Roqueplan. In fact, it was only a pompier that hit upon it to get out of a terrible scrape. He was going to be brought before a court-martial for neglect of duty. It happened under the management of my immediate successor, Duponchel, at the fourth or fifth performance of Halévy's 'Guido et Génevra.' Some of the scenery caught fire, and, but for Duponchel's presence of mind, there would have been a panic and a horrible catastrophe. Nevertheless, the cause of the accident had to be ascertained, and it was found that the brigadier fireman posted at the spot where the mischief began had been asleep. He frankly admitted his fault, at the same time pleading extenuating circumstances. 'What do you mean?' asked the captain, charged with the report. 'Such a thing has never happened to me before, mon capitaine, but it is impossible for any one to keep his eyes open during that act. You need not take my word, but perhaps you will try the effect yourself.' The captain did try; the captain sat for two or three minutes after the rise of the curtain, then he was seen to leave his place hurriedly. The brigadier and his men were severely reprimanded, but they were not tried. Out of respect for Halévy the matter was kept a secret.

"I may add," said our host, "that the pompier is by no means a bad judge of things theatrical, seeing that he is rarely away from the stage for more than three or four nights at a time. I remember perfectly well that, during the rehearsals of 'Robert le Diable,' Meyerbeer often had a chat with them. Curiously enough he now and then made little alterations after these conversations. I am not insinuating that the great composer acted upon their suggestions, but I should not at all wonder if he had done so."

Alexandre Dumas, in whose honour, it will be remembered, the dinner was given, had an excellent memory, and some years afterwards profited by the experiment. I tell the story as it was given to us subsequently by his son. Only a few friends and Alexandre the younger were present at the first of the final rehearsals of "The Three Musketeers," at the Ambigu Comique. They were not dress rehearsals proper, because there were no costumes, and the scenery merely consisted of a cloth and some wings. Behind one of the latter they had noticed, during the first six tableaux, the shining helmet of a fireman who was listening very attentively. The author had noticed him too. About the middle of the seventh tableau the helmet suddenly vanished, and the father remarked upon it to his son. When the act was finished, Dumas went in search of the pompier, who did not know him. "What made you go away?" he asked him. "Because it did not amuse me half as much as the others," was the answer. "That was enough for my father," said the younger Dumas. "There and then he went to Béraud's room, took off his coat, waistcoat, and braces, unfastened the collar of his shirt—it was the only way he could work—and sent for the prompt copy of the seventh tableau, which he tore up and flung into the fire, to the consternation of Béraud. 'What are you doing?' he exclaimed. 'You see what I am doing; I am destroying the seventh tableau. It does not amuse the pompier. I know what it wants.' And an hour and a half later, at the termination of the rehearsal, the actors were given a fresh seventh tableau to study."

I have come back by a roundabout way to the author of "Monte-Christo," because, tout chemin avec moi mène à Dumas; I repeat, he constitutes one of the happiest of my recollections. After the lapse of many years, I willingly admit that I would have cheerfully foregone the acquaintance of all the other celebrities, perhaps David d'Angers excepted, for that of Dumas père.

After the lapse of many years, the elder Dumas still represents to me all the good qualities of the French nation and few of their bad ones. It was absolutely impossible to be dull in his society, but it must not be thought that these contagious animal spirits only showed themselves periodically or when in company. It was what the French have so aptly termed "la joie de vivre," albeit that they rarely associate the phrase with any one not in the spring of life. With Dumas it was chronic until a very few months before his death. I remember calling upon him shortly after the dinner of which I spoke just now. He had taken up his quarters at Saint-Germain, and come to Paris only for a few days. "Is monsieur at home?" I said to the servant.

"He is in his study, monsieur," was the answer. "Monsieur can go in."

At that moment I heard a loud burst of laughter from the inner apartment, so I said, "I would sooner wait until monsieur's visitors are gone."

"Monsieur has no visitors; he is working," remarked the servant with a smile. "Monsieur Dumas often laughs like this at his work."

It was true enough, the novelist was alone, or rather in company with one of his characters, at whose sallies he was simply roaring.

Work, in fact, was a pleasure to him, like everything else he undertook. One day he had been out shooting, between Villers-Cotterets and Compiègne, since six in the morning, and had killed twenty-nine birds. "I am going to make up the score and a half, and then I'll have a sleep, for I feel tired," he said. When he had killed his thirtieth partridge he slowly walked back to the farm, where his son and friends found him about four hours later, toasting himself before the fire, his feet on the andirons, and twirling his thumbs.

"What are you sitting there for like that?" asked his son.

"Can't you see? I am resting."

"Did you get your sleep?"

"No, I didn't; it's impossible to sleep here. There is an infernal noise; what with the sheep, the cows, the pigs, and the rest, there is no chance of getting a wink."

"So you have been sitting here for the last four hours, twirling your thumbs?"

"No, I have been writing a piece in one act." The piece in question was "Romulus," which he gave to Régnier to have it read at the Comédie-Française, under a pseudonym, and as the work of a young unknown author. It was accepted without a dissentient vote.

It is a well-known fact, vouched for by the accounts of the Compagnie du Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest, that during the three years Dumas lived at Saint-Germain, the receipts increased by twenty thousand francs per annum. Of course, it has been objected that railways being then in their infancy the increment would have been just the same without Dumas' presence in the royal residence, but, curiously enough, from the day he left, the passenger traffic fell to its previous state. Dumas had simply galvanized the sleepy old town into life, he had bought the theatre where the artists of the Comédie-Française, previous to supping with him, came to play "Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle" or the "Demoiselles de Saint-Cyr," for the benefit of the poor. On such occasions, there was not a room to be had at the hotels. After supper, there were twice a week fireworks on the Terrace, which could be seen from Paris and from Versailles, to the great astonishment of Louis-Philippe, who really attributed the change to the beneficence of his reign, although he failed to account for the continued dulness of the latter royal borough, where he himself resided, and whose picture-galleries he had restored and thrown open to the public, besides having the great fountains to play every first Sunday of the month.

One day the king sent for M. de Montalivet, and told him that, though gratified at the revived prosperity of Saint-Germain, he would like to see a little more gaiety at Versailles.

"You really mean it, sire?" asked the minister.

"Not only do I mean it, but I confess to you that it would give me great pleasure."

"Well, sire, Alexandre Dumas has lately been sentenced to a fortnight's imprisonment for neglecting his duty in the National Guards: make an order for him to spend that fortnight in Versailles, and I guarantee your Majesty that Versailles will be lively enough."

Louis-Philippe did not act upon the suggestion. The only member of the d'Orléans' family who was truly sympathetic to Dumas was the king's eldest son, whose untimely death shortly afterwards affected the great novelist very much, albeit that he frankly acknowledged to regretting the man and not the future ruler; for while loudly professing his republican creed, he never pretended to overlook his indebtedness to Louis-Philippe, when Duc d'Orléans, for having befriended him; nay, I am inclined to think that Dumas' gratitude was far greater than the case warranted. When, in 1847, the fancy took him to go into parliament, he naturally turned to the borough he had benefited so much by his stay there—Saint-Germain, and Saint-Germain denied him. They thought him too immoral. Dumas waited patiently for another opportunity, which did not come until the following year, when Louis-Philippe had abdicated. Addressing a meeting of electors at Joigny, he was challenged by a M. de Bonnelière to reconcile his title of republican with his title of Marquis de la Pailleterie, and the fact of his having been a secretary to the Duc d'Orléans, although he had never occupied so important a position in the Duc d'Orléans' household. His reply was simply scathing, and I give it in full as the papers of the day reproduced it. "No doubt," he said, in an off-hand, bantering way, "I was formerly called the Marquis de la Pailleterie, which was my father's name, and of which I was very proud, being unable then to claim a glorious one of my own make. But at present, when I am somebody, I call myself Alexandre Dumas and nothing more; and everybody knows me, you among the rest—you, you absolute nobody, who have merely come to be able to boast to-morrow, after insulting me to-night, that you have known the great Dumas. If such was your ambition, you might have satisfied it without failing in the common courtesies of a gentleman."

When the applause which the reply provoked had subsided, Dumas went on: "There is also no doubt about my having been a secretary to the Duc d'Orléans, and that I have received all kinds of favours from his family. If you, citizen, are ignorant of the meaning of the term, 'the memory of the heart,' allow me at least to proclaim here in my loudest voice, that I am not, and that I entertain towards this royal family all the devotion an honourable man can feel."

It is, however, not my intention to sketch Alexandre Dumas as a politician, for which career I considered him singularly unfit; but the speech from which I extracted the foregoing contains a few lines which, more than thirty-five years after they were spoken, cannot fail to strike the reader with his marvellous foresight. "Geographically," he said, commenting upon the political state of Europe, "Prussia has the form of a serpent, and, like it, she seems to be asleep, and to gather her strength in order to swallow everything around her—Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and, when she shall have swallowed all that, you will find that Austria will be swallowed in its turn, and perhaps, alas, France also."

The last words, as may be imagined, provoked a storm of hisses; nevertheless, he kept his audience spellbound until midnight.

A parliamentary candidate, however eloquent, who flings his constituents into the river when they happen to annoy him, must have been a novelty even in those days, and that is what Dumas did to two brawlers after said meeting, just to show them that his "aristocratic grip" was worth their "plebeian one."

A few years later, at a dinner at Dumas', in the Rue d'Amsterdam, I met a Monsieur du Chaffault who had been an eye-witness of this, as well as of other scenes during that memorable day. Until the morning of that day, M. du Chaffault had never set eyes on the great novelist; in the evening, he was his friend for life. It only proves once more the irresistible fascination Dumas exercised over every one with whom he came in contact, because the beginning of that friendship cost M. du Chaffault six hundred francs, the expenses of that part of the electoral campaign. The story, as told by M. du Chaffault the following afternoon in the Café Riche to Dr. Véron, myself, and Joseph Méry, is too good to be missed. I give it as near as I can remember.

"I was about twenty-four then, with nothing particular to do, and a moderate private income. They were painting and whitewashing my place, a few miles away from Sens, and I had taken up my quarters in the principal hotel in the town. The first elections under the second republic were being held. There was a good deal of excitement everywhere, and I liked it, though not taking the slightest interest in politics. This was in May, 1848; and about six, one morning while I was still in bed, the door of my room was suddenly opened without knocking, and what seemed to me a big black monster stood before me. There was a pistol lying by the side of me, and I was reaching towards it, when he spoke. 'Don't alarm yourself,' he said; 'I am Alexandre Dumas. They told me you were a good fellow, and I have come to ask you a service.'

"I had never seen Dumas in the flesh, only a portrait of him, but I recognized him immediately. 'You have often afforded me a great deal of amusement, but I confess you frightened me,' I said. 'What, in Heaven's name, do you want at this unholy hour?'

"'I have slept here,' was the answer. 'I landed here at midnight, and am starting for Joigny by-and-by, to attend a political meeting. I am putting up as a member for your department.'

"I jumped out of bed at once, Dumas handed me my trousers, and, when I got as far as my boots, he says, 'Oh, while I think of it, I have come to ask you for a pair of boots; in stepping into the carriage, one of mine has come to utter grief, and there is no shop open.'

"As you may see for yourselves, I am by no means a giant, and Dumas is one. I pointed this out to him, but he did not even answer me. He had caught sight of three or four pair of boots under the dressing-table, and, in the twinkling of an eye, chose the best pair and pulled them on, leaving me his old ones, absolutely worn out, but which I have preserved in my library at home. I always show them to my visitors as the thousand and first volume of Alexandre Dumas.[8]

"By the time he got the boots on we were friends, as if we had known one another for years; as for Dumas, he was 'theeing' and 'thouing' me as if we had been at school together.

"'You are going to Joigny?' I said; 'I know a good many people there.'

"'All the better, for I am going to take you along with me.'

"Having to go no further than Joigny, and being taken thither in the conveyance of my newly-made friend, I did not think it necessary to provide myself with an extra supply of funds, the more that I had between five and six hundred francs in my pocket. In a short time we were on our road, and the first stage of three hours seemed to me as many minutes. Whenever we passed a country seat, out came a lot of anecdotes and legends connected with its owners, interlarded with quaint fancies and epigrams. At that first change of horses Dumas' secretary paid. At the second, Villevailles, Dumas says, 'Have you got twenty francs change?' Without a moment's hesitation, I took out my purse, paid the money, and put down in my pocket-book, 'Alexandre Dumas, twenty francs.' I might have saved myself the trouble, as I found out in a very short time, for the moment he got out at Joigny, he rushed off in a hurry without troubling about anything. The postilion turned to me for his money, and I paid, and put down once more, 'Alexandre Dumas, thirty francs.'

"The first meeting was fixed for four, at the theatre. They applied to me for the hire of the building, for the gas. I went on paying, but I no longer put down the items, saying to myself, 'When my six hundred francs are gone, my little excursion will be at an end, and I'll go back to Sens.' The little excursion did not extend to more than one day, seeing that I had to settle the dinner bill at the Duc de Bourgogne, Dumas having invited every one he met on his way. I am only sorry for one thing, that I did not have ten thousand francs in my pocket that morning in order to prolong my excursion for a week or so. But next morning my purse was empty, and 'our defeat was certain.' I had already identified myself with Dumas' aspirations, so I returned to Sens by myself, but overjoyed at having seen and spoken to this man of genius, who is richer than all the millionnaires in the world put together, seeing that he never troubles himself about paying, and has therefore no need to worry about money. Three months afterwards, the printer at Joigny drew upon me for a hundred francs for electioneering bills, which, of course, I could not have ordered, but which draft I settled as joyfully as I had settled the rest. I have preserved the draft with the boots; they are mementoes of my first two days' friendship with my dear friend."

At the first blush, all this sounds very much as if we were dealing with a mere Harold Skimpole, but no man was more unlike Dickens' creation than Alexandre Dumas. M. du Chaffault described him rightly when he said that he did not worry about money, not even his own. "My biographer," Dumas often said, "will not fail to point out that I was 'a panier percé,'[9] neglecting, as a matter of course, to mention that, as a rule, it was not I who made the holes."

The biographers have not been quite so unjust as that. Unfortunately, few of them knew Dumas intimately, and they were so intent upon sketching the playwright and the novelist that they neglected the man. They could have had the stories of Alexandra Dumas' improvidence with regard to himself and his generosity to others for the asking from his familiars. On the other hand, the latter have only told these stories in a fragmentary way; a complete collection of them would be impossible, for no one, not even Dumas himself, knew half the people whom he befriended. In that very apartment of the Rue d'Amsterdam which I mentioned just now, the board was free to any and every one who chose to come in. Not once, but a score of times, have I heard Dumas ask, after this or that man had left the table, "Who is he? what's his name?" Whosoever came with, or at the tail, not of a friend, but of a simple acquaintance, especially if the acquaintance happened to wear skirts, was immediately invited to breakfast or dinner as the case might be. Count de Cherville once told me that Dumas, having taken a house at Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, his second month's bill for meat alone amounted to eleven hundred francs. Let it be remembered that his household consisted of himself, two secretaries, and three servants, and that money went a great deal further than it does at present, especially in provincial France, in some parts of which living is still very cheap. In consequence of one of those financial crises, which were absolutely periodical with Alexandre Dumas, M. de Cherville had prevailed upon him to leave Paris for a while, and to take up his quarters with him. All went comparatively well as long as he was M. de Cherville's guest; but, having taken a liking to the neighbourhood, he rented a house of his own, and furnished it from garret to cellar in the most expensive way, as if he were going to spend the remainder of his life in it. Exclusive of the furniture, he spent between fifteen thousand and eighteen thousand francs on hangings, painting, and repairs. The parasites and harpies which M. de Cherville had kept at bay came down upon him like a swarm of locusts. "And how long, think you, did Dumas stay in his new domicile? Three months, not a day more nor less. As a matter of course, the furniture did not fetch a quarter of its cost; the repairs, the decorating, etc., were so much sheer waste: for the incoming tenant refused to refund a cent for it, and Dumas, having made up his mind to go to Italy, would not wait for a more liberal or conscientious one, lest he should have the rent of the empty house on his shoulders also. Luckily, I took care that he should pocket the proceeds of the sale of the furniture."

This last sentence wants explaining. As a rule, when a man sells his sticks, he pockets the money. But the instance just mentioned was the only one in which Dumas had the disposal of his household goods. The presiding divinity invariably carried them away with her when she had to make room for a successor, and these successions generally occurred once, sometimes twice, a year. "La reine est morte, vive la reine." The new sovereign, for the first few days of her reign, had to be content with bare walls and very few material comforts; then the nest was upholstered afresh, and "il n'y avait rien de changé en la demeure, sauf le nom de la maîtresse."

Consequently, though for forty years Alexandre Dumas could not have earned less than eight thousand pounds per annum; though he neither smoked, drank, nor gambled; though, in spite of his mania for cooking, he himself was the most frugal eater—the beef from the soup of the previous day, grilled, was his favourite dish,—it rained writs and summonses around him, while he himself was frequently without a penny.

M. du Chaffault one day told me of a scene à propos of this which is worth reproducing. He was chatting to Dumas in his study, when a visitor was shown in. He turned out to be an Italian man of letters and refugee, on the verge of starvation. M. du Chaffault could not well make out what was said, because they were talking Italian, but all at once Dumas got up and took from the wall behind him a magnificent pistol, one of a pair. The visitor walked off with it, to M. du Chaffault's surprise. When he was gone, Dumas turned to his friend and explained: "He was utterly penniless, and so am I; so I gave him the pistol."

"Great Heavens, you surely did not recommend him to go and make an end of himself!" interrupted du Chaffault.

Dumas burst out laughing. "Of course not. I merely told him to go and sell or pawn it, and leave me the fellow one, in case some other poor wretch should want assistance while I am so terribly hard up."

And yet, in this very Rue d'Amsterdam, whether Dumas was terribly impecunious or not, the déjeûner, which generally began at about half-past eleven, was rarely finished before half-past four, because during the whole of that time fresh contingents arrived to be fed, and communication was kept up between the apartment and the butcher for corresponding fresh supplies of beefsteaks and cutlets.

Is it a wonder, then, that it rained summonses, and writs, and other law documents? But no one took much notice of these, not even one of the four secretaries, who was specially appointed to look after these things. If I remember aright, his name was Hirschler. The names of the other three secretaries were Rusconi, Viellot, and Fontaine. Unfortunately, Hirschler was as dilatory as his master, and, until the process-server claimed a personal interview, as indifferent. These "limbs of the law" were marvellously polite. I was present one day at an interview between one of these and Hirschler, for Dumas' dwelling was absolutely and literally the glass house of the ancient philosopher—with this difference, that no one threw any stones from it. There was no secret, no skeleton in the cupboard; the impecuniosity and the recurrent periods of plenty were both as open as the day.

The "man of law" and Hirschler began by shaking hands, for they were old acquaintances; it would have been difficult to find a process-server in Paris who was not an old acquaintance of Dumas. After which the visitor informed Hirschler that he had come to distrain.

"To distrain? I did not know we had got as far as that," said Hirschler. "Wait a moment. I must go and see." It meant that Hirschler repaired to the kitchen, where stood a large oaken sideboard, in a capacious drawer of which all the law documents, no matter by whom received, were indiscriminately thrown, to be fished out when the "mauvais quart d'heure" came, and not until then.

"You are right," said Hirschler, but not in the least worried or excited, "I really did not know we had got as far as that. I must ask you to wait another minute. I suppose a third or a fourth of the total amount will do for the present?"

"Well, I do not know," said the process-server with most exquisite politeness. "Try what you can do. I fancy that with a third I may manage to stop proceedings for a while."

The third or fourth part of the debt was rarely in the house; messengers had to be despatched for it to Cadot, the publisher, or to the cashier of the Moniteur, Constitutionnel, or Siècle. Meanwhile the process-server was feasted in a sumptuous way, and when the messenger returned with the sum in question, Hirschler and the process-server shook hands once more, with the most cordial au revoir possible.

As a matter of course, the same process-server reappeared upon the scene in a few months. The comedy had often as many as a dozen representations, so that it may safely be said that a great number of Dumas' debts were paid six or seven times over. Even sixpence a line of sixty letters did not suffice to keep pace with such terrible improvidence, though the remuneration was much more frequently fourpence or fivepence. It rarely rose to sevenpence halfpenny, but in all cases a third went to Dumas' collaborateurs, another third to his creditors, and the rest to himself.

I have allowed my pen to run away with me. One more story, and then I leave Alexandre Dumas for the present. It is simply to show that he would have squandered the fortune of all the Rothschilds combined: I repeat, not on himself; he would have given it away, or allowed it to be taken. He had no notion of the value of money. About a year after I had made his acquaintance, he was ill at Saint-Germain, and I went to see him. His dog had bitten him severely in the right hand; he was in bed, and obliged to dictate. His son had just left him, and he told me, adding, "C'est un cœur d'or, cet Alexandre." Seeing that I did not ask what had elicited the praise, he began telling me.

"This morning I received six hundred and fifty francs. Just now Alexandre was going up to Paris, and he says, 'I'll take fifty francs.'

"I did not pay attention, or must have misunderstood; at any rate I replied, 'Don't take as much as that; leave me a hundred francs.'

"'What do you mean, father?' he asked. 'I am telling you that I am going to take fifty francs.'

"'I beg your pardon,' I said. 'I understood you were going to take six hundred.'"

He would have considered it the most natural thing in the world for his son to take six hundred and leave him fifty; just as he considered it the most natural thing to bare his arm and to have a dozen leeches put on it, because his son, when a boy of eight, having met with an accident, would not consent to blood-letting of that kind. In vain did the father tell him that the leeches did not hurt. "Well, put some on yourself, and then I will." And the giant turned up his sleeves, and did as he was told.

CHAPTER IV.

Dr. Louis Véron — The real man as distinguished from that of his own "Memoirs" — He takes the management of the Paris Opéra — How it was governed before his advent — Meyerbeer's "Robert le Diable" underlined — Meyerbeer and his doubts upon the merits of his work — Meyerbeer's generosity — Meyerbeer and the beggars of the Rue Le Peletier — Dr. Véron, the inventor of the modern newspaper puff — Some specimens of advertisements in their infancy — Dr. Véron takes a leaf from the book of Molière — Dr. Véron's love of money — His superstitions — His objections to travelling in railways — He quotes the Queen of England as an example — When Queen Victoria overcomes her objection, Véron holds out — "Queen Victoria has got a successor: the Véron dynasty begins and ends with me" — Thirteen at table — I make the acquaintance of Taglioni — The woman and the ballerina — Her adventure at Perth — An improvised performance of "Nathalie, la Laitière Suisse" — Another adventure in Russia — A modern Claude Du-Val — My last meeting with Taglioni — A dinner-party at De Morny's — A comedy scene between husband and wife — Flotow, the composer of "Martha" — His family — His father's objection to the composer's profession — The latter's interview with M. de Saint-Georges, the author of the libretto of Balfe's "Bohemian Girl" — M. de Saint-Georges prevails upon the father to let his son study in Paris for five years, and to provide for him during that time — The supplies are stopped on the last day of the fifth year — Flotow, at the advice of M. de Saint-Georges, stays on and lives by giving piano-lessons — His earthly possessions at his first success — "Rob Roy" at the Hôtel Castellane — Lord Granville's opinion of the music — The Hôtel Castellane and some Paris salons during Louis-Philippe's reign — The Princesse de Lieven's, M. Thiers', etc. — What Madame de Girardin's was like — Victor Hugo's — Perpetual adoration; very artistic, but nothing to eat or to drink — The salon of the ambassador of the Two Sicilies — Lord and Lady Granville at the English Embassy — The salon of Count Apponyi — A story connected with it — Furniture and entertainments — Cakes, ices, and tea; no champagne as during the Second Empire — The Hôtel Castellane and its amateur theatricals — Rival companies — No under-studies — Lord Brougham at the Hôtel Castellane — His bad French and his would-be Don Juanism — A French rendering of Shakespeare's "There is but one step between the sublime and the ridiculous," as applied to Lord Brougham — He nearly accepts a part in a farce where his bad French is likely to produce a comic effect — His successor as a murderer of the language — M. de Saint-Georges — Like Molière, he reads his plays to his housekeeper — When the latter is not satisfied, the dinner is spoilt, however great the success of the play in public estimation — Great men and their housekeepers — Turner, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Eugène Delacroix.

Next to Dumas, the man who is uppermost in my recollections of that period is Dr. Louis Véron, the founder of the Revue de Paris, which was the precursor of the Revue des Deux Mondes; Dr Véron, under whose management the Paris Opéra rose to a degree of perfection it has never attained since; Dr. Véron, who, as some one said, was as much part and parcel of the history of Paris during the first half of the nineteenth century as was Napoléon I. of the history of France; Dr. Véron, than whom there has been no more original figure in any civilized community before or since, with the exception, perhaps, of Phineas Barnum, to whom, however, he was infinitely superior in education, tact, and manners.

Dr. Véron has written his own "Memoirs" in six bulky volumes, to which he added a seventh a few years later. They are full of interesting facts from beginning to end, especially to those who did not know intimately the author or the times of which he treats. Those who did are tempted to repeat the mot of Diderot when they gave him the portrait of his father. "This is my Sunday father; I want my everyday father." The painter, in fact, had represented the worthy cutler of Langres in his best coat and wig, etc.; not as his son had been in the habit of seeing him. The Dr. Véron of the "Memoirs" is not the Dr. Véron of the Café de Paris, nor the Dr. Véron of the avant-scène in his own theatre, snoring a duet with Auber, and "keeping better time than the great composer himself;" he is not the Dr. Véron full of fads and superstitions and uniformly kind, "because kindness is as a rule a capital investment;" he is not the cheerful pessimist we knew; he is a grumbling optimist, as the journalists of his time have painted him; in short, in his book he is a quasi-philanthropic illusion, while in reality he was a hard-hearted, shrewd business man who did good by stealth now and then, but never blushed to find it fame.

The event which proved the starting-point of Dr. Véron's celebrity was neither of his own making nor of his own seeking. Though it happened when I was a mere lad, I have heard it discussed in after-years sufficiently often and by very good authorities to be confident of my facts. In June, 1831, Dr. Véron took the management of the Paris Opéra, which up till then had been governed on the style of the old régime, namely, by three gentlemen of the king's household with a working director under them. The royal privy purse was virtually responsible for its liabilities. Louis-Philippe shifted the burden of that responsibility on the State, and limited its extent. The three gentlemen of the king's household were replaced by a royal commissioner, and the yearly subsidy fixed at £32,500; still a pretty round sum, which has been reduced since by £500 only.

At Dr. Véron's advent, Meyerbeer's "Robert le Diable" was, what they call in theatrical parlance, "underlined," or, if not underlined, at least definitely accepted. Only one work of his had at that time been heard in Paris, "Il Crociato in Egitto."

It is difficult to determine, after so many years, whether Dr. Véron, notwithstanding his artistic instincts, was greatly smitten with the German composer's masterpiece. It has often been argued that he was not, because he insisted upon an indemnity of forty thousand francs from the Government towards the cost of its production. In the case of a man like Véron, this proves nothing at all. He may have been thoroughly convinced of the merits of "Robert le Diable," and as thoroughly confident of its success with the public, though no manager, not even the most experienced, can be; it would not have prevented him from squeezing the forty thousand francs from the minister on the plea that the performance of the work was imposed upon him by a treaty of his predecessor. To Dr. Véron's credit be it said that he might have saved himself the hard tussle he had with the minister by simply applying for the money to Meyerbeer himself, who would have given it without a moment's hesitation, rather than see the success of "Robert le Diable" jeopardized by inefficient mounting, although up to the last Meyerbeer could never make up his mind whether magnificent scenery and gorgeous dresses were an implied compliment or the reverse to the musical value of his compositions. À propos of this there is a very characteristic story. At one of the final dress-rehearsals of "Robert le Diable," Meyerbeer felt much upset. At the sight of that beautiful set of the cloister of Sainte-Rosalie, where the nuns rise from their tombs, at the effect produced by the weird procession, Meyerbeer came up to Véron.

"My dear director," he said, "I perceive well enough that you do not depend upon the opera itself; you are, in fact, running after a spectacular success."

"Wait till the fourth act," replied Véron, who was above all logical.

The curtain rose upon the fourth act, and what did Meyerbeer behold? Instead of the vast, grandiose apartment he had conceived for Isabella, Princess of Sicily, he found a mean, shabby set, which would have been deemed scarcely good enough for a minor theatre.

"Decidedly, my dear director," said Meyerbeer, with a bitter twinge in his features and voice, "I perceive well enough that you have no faith in my score; you did not even dare go to the expense of a new set. I would willingly have paid for it myself."

And he would willingly have paid for it, because Meyerbeer was not only very rich, but very generous.

"It is a very funny thing," said Lord ——, as he came into the Café de Paris one morning, many years afterwards; "there are certain days in the week when the Rue Le Peletier seems to be swarming with beggars, and, what is funnier still, they don't take any notice of me. I pass absolutely scot-free."

"I'll bet," remarked Roger de Beauvoir, "that they are playing 'Robert le Diable' or 'Les Huguenots' to-night, and I can assure you that I have not seen the bills."

"Now that you speak of it, they are playing 'Les Huguenots' to-night," replied Lord ——; "but what has that to do with it? I am not aware that the Paris beggars manifest a particular predilection for Meyerbeer's operas, and that they are booking their places on the days they are performed."

"It's simply this," explained De Beauvoir: "both Rossini and Meyerbeer never fail to come of a morning to look at the bills, and when the latter finds his name on them, he is so overjoyed that he absolutely empties his pockets of all the cash they contain. Notwithstanding his many years of success, he is still afraid that the public's liking for his music is merely a passing fancy, and as every additional performance decreases this apprehension, he thinks he cannot be sufficiently thankful to Providence. His gratitude shows itself in almsgiving."

I made it my business subsequently to verify what I considered De Beauvoir's fantastical statement, and I found it substantially correct.

To return to Dr. Véron, who, there is no doubt, did the best he could for "Robert le Diable," to which and to the talent of Taglioni he owed his fortune. At the same time, it would be robbing him of part of his glory did we not state that the success of that great work might have been less signal but for him; both his predecessors and successors had and have still equally good chances without having availed themselves of them, either in the interest of lyrical art or in that of the public.

I compared Dr. Véron just now to Phineas Barnum, and the comparison was not made at random. Dr. Véron was really the inventor of the newspaper puff direct and indirect—of that personal journalism which records the slightest deed or gesture of the popular theatrical manager, and which at the present day is carried to excess. And all his subordinates and co-workers were made to share the advantages of the system, because their slightest doings also reflected glory upon him. An artist filling at a moment's notice the part of a fellow-artist who had become suddenly ill, a carpenter saving by his presence of mind the situation at a critical juncture, had not only his paragraph in next morning's papers, but a whole column, containing the salient facts of his life and career. It was the system of Frederick the Great and of the first Napoléon, acknowledging the daring deeds of their smallest as well as of their foremost aids—with this difference, that the French captain found it convenient to suppress them now and then, and that Dr. Véron never attempted to do so. When the idea of putting down these notes first entered my mind, I looked over some files of newspapers of that particular period, and there was scarcely one between 1831 and 1835 that did not contain a lengthy reference to the Grand Opéra and its director. I was irresistibly reminded of the bulletins the great Napoléon dictated on the battle-field. I have also seen a collection of posters relating to the same brilliant reign at the Opéra. Of course, compared to the eloquent effusions and ingenious attempts of the contemporary theatrical manager to bait the public, Véron's are mere child's play; still we must remember that the art of puffing was in its infancy, and, as such, some of them are worth copying. The public was not so blasé and it swallowed the bait eagerly. Here they are.

"To-morrow tenth performance of ..., which henceforth will only be played at rare intervals.

"To-morrow twentieth performance of ...; positively the last before the departure of M....

"To-morrow seventeenth performance of ...; reappearance of Madame ...

"To-morrow fifteenth performance of ... by all the principal artists who 'created' the parts.

"To-morrow thirtieth performance of ... The third scene of the second act will be played as on the first night.

"To-morrow twentieth performance of ..., which can only be played for a limited number of nights.

"To-morrow sixteenth performance of .... In the Ball-Room Scene a new pas de Châles will be introduced.

"To-morrow thirtieth performance of .... This successful work must be momentarily suspended owing to previous arrangements."

Childish as these lines may look to the present generation, they produced a fortune of £2000 a year to Dr. Véron in four years, and, but for the outbreak of the cholera in '32, when "Robert le Diable" was in the flush of its success, would have produced another £1000 per annum. At that time Dr. Véron had already been able to put aside £24,000, and he might have easily closed his theatre during those terrible months; but, like Molière, he asked himself what would become of all those who were dependent upon him, and had not put aside anything; so he made his savings into ten parcels, intending to hold out as many months without asking help of any one. Five of the parcels went. At the beginning of the sixth month the cholera abated; by the end it had almost disappeared.

Those who would infer from this that Dr. Véron was indifferent to money, would make a great mistake. But he would not allow his love of it to get the upper hand, to come between him and his conscience, to make him commit either a dishonest or a foolish act. By a foolish act he meant headlong speculation. When the shares of the Northern Railway were allotted, Dr. Véron owned the Constitutionnel; 150 shares were allotted to him, which at that moment represented a clear profit of 60,000 francs, they being 400 francs above par. Dr. Véron made up his mind to realize there and then. But it was already late; the Bourse was closed, the stockbrokers had finished business for the day. He, however, met one on the Boulevards, who gave him a cheque for 55,000 francs on the Bank of France, which could only be cashed next day. The shares were left meanwhile in Dr. Véron's possession. Three minutes after the bargain was concluded Dr. Véron went back to his office. "I must have ready money for this, or decline the transaction," he said. The stockbroker, by applying to two of his colleagues, managed to scrape together 50,000 francs. Dr. Véron gave him a receipt in full, returned home, singing as he went the French version of "A bird in the hand," etc.

Véron was exceedingly superstitious, and had fads. He could never be induced to take a railway journey. It was generally known in France at that time that, in the early days of locomotion by steam, Queen Victoria had held a similar objection. Véron, when twitted with his objection, invariably replied, "I have yet to learn that the Queen of England is less enlightened than any of you, and she will not enter a railway carriage." But one day the report spread that the queen had made a journey from Windsor to London by the "iron horse," and then Véron was sorely pressed. He had his answer ready. "The Queen of England has got a successor: the Véron dynasty begins and ends with me. I must take care to make it last as long as possible." He stuck to his text till the end of his life.

On no consideration would Véron have sat down "thirteen at table." Once or twice when the guests and host made up that number, his coachman's son was sent for, dressed, and made presentable, and joined the party; at others he politely requested two or three of us to go and dine at the Café de Paris, and to have the bill sent to him. We drew lots as to who was to go.

It was through Dr. Véron that I became acquainted with most of the operatic celebrities—Meyerbeer, Halévy, Auber, Duprez, etc.; for though he had abdicated his directorship seven or eight years before we met, he was perhaps a greater power then in the lyrical world than at the date of his reign.

It was at Dr. Véron's that I saw Mdlle. Taglioni for the first time—off the stage. It must have been in 1844, for she had not been in Paris since 1840, when I had seen her dance at the Opéra. I had only seen her dance once before that, in '36 or '37, but I was altogether too young to judge then. I own that in 1840 I was somewhat disappointed, and my disappointment was shared by many, because some of my friends, to whom I communicated my impressions, told me that her three years' absence had made a vast difference in her art. In '44 it was still worse; her performances gave rise to many a spiteful epigram, for she herself invited comparison between her former glory and her decline, by dancing in one of her most successful creations, "L'Ombre." Those most leniently disposed towards her thought what Alfred de Musset so gracefully expressed when requested to write some verses in her album.

"Si vous ne voulez plus danser,
Si vous ne faites que passer
Sur ce grand théâtre si sombre,
Ne courez pas après votre ombre
Et tâchez de nous la laisser."

My disappointment with the ballerina was as nothing, however, to my disappointment with the woman. I had been able to determine for myself before then that Marie Taglioni was by no means a good-looking woman, but I did not expect her to be so plain as she was. That, after all, was not her fault; but she might have tried to make amends for her lack of personal charms by her amiability. She rarely attempted to do so, and never with Frenchmen. Her reception of them was freezing to a degree, and on the occasions—few and far between—when she thawed, it was with Russians, Englishmen, or Viennese. Any male of the Latin races she held metaphorically as well as literally at arm's length. Of the gracefulness, so apparent on the stage, even in her decline, there was not a trace to be found in private life. One of her shoulders was higher than the other; she limped slightly, and, moreover, waddled like a duck. The pinched mouth was firmly set; there was no smile on the colourless lips, and she replied to one's remarks in monosyllables.

Truly she had suffered a cruel wrong at the hands of men—of one man, bien entendu; nevertheless, the wonder to most people who knew her was not that Comte Gilbert de Voisins should have left her so soon after their marriage, but that he should have married her at all. "The fact was," said some one with whom I discussed the marriage one day, "that De Voisins considered himself in honour bound to make that reparation, but I cannot conceive what possessed him to commit the error that made the reparation necessary." And I am bound to say that it was not the utter lack of personal attractions that made every one, men and women alike, indifferent to Taglioni. She was what the French call "une pimbêche."[10] "Am I not a good-natured woman?" said Mdlle. Mars one day to Hoffman, the blood-curdling novelist. "Mademoiselle, you are the most amiable creature I know between the footlights and the cloth," he replied. No one could have paid Taglioni even such a left-handed compliment, for, if all I heard was true, she was not good-tempered either on or off the stage. Dr. Véron, who was really a very loyal friend, was very reticent about her character, and would never be drawn into revelations. "You know the French proverb," he said once, when I pressed him very closely. "'On ne hérite pas de ceux que l'on tue;' and, after all, she helped me to make my fortune."

That evening I was seated next to Mdlle. Taglioni at dinner, and when she discovered my nationality she unbent a little, so that towards the dessert we were on comparatively friendly terms. She had evidently very grateful recollections of her engagements in London, for it was the only topic on which I could get her to talk on that occasion. Here is a little story I had from her own lips, and which shows the Scotch of the early thirties in quite a new light. It may have been known once, but has been probably forgotten by now, except by the "oldest inhabitant" of Perth. In 1832 or 1833—I will not vouch for the exact year, seeing that it is two score of years since the story was told to me—the season in London had been a fatiguing one for Taglioni. A ballet her father had composed for her, "Nathalie, ou la Laitière Suisse," a very inane thing by all accounts, had met with great success in London. The scene, however, had, as far as I could make out, been changed from Switzerland to Scotland, but of this I will not be certain. At the termination of her engagement Taglioni wanted rest, and she bethought herself to recruit in the Highlands. After travelling hither and thither for a little while, she arrived at Perth, and, as a matter of course, put down her name in the visitors' book of the hotel, then went out to explore the sights of the town. Meanwhile the report of her arrival had spread like wildfire, and on her return to the hotel she found awaiting her a deputation from the principal inhabitants, with the request to honour them with a performance. "The request was so graciously conveyed," said Taglioni, "that I could not but accept, though I took care to point out the difficulties of performing a ballet all by myself, seeing that there was neither a corps de ballet, a male dancer, nor any one else to support me. All these objections were overruled by their promise to provide all these in the best way they could, and before I had time to consider the matter fully, I was taken off in a cab to inspect the theatre, etc. Great heavens, what a stage and scenery! Still, I had given my promise, and, seeing their anxiety, would not go back from it. I cannot tell where they got their personnel from. There was a director and a stage-manager, but as he did not understand French, and as my English at that time was even worse than it is now, we were obliged to communicate through an interpreter. His English must have been bewildering, to judge from the manager's blank looks when he spoke to him, and his French was even more wonderful than my English. He was a German waiter from the hotel.

"Nevertheless, thanks to him, I managed to convey the main incidents of the plot of 'Nathalie' to the manager, and during the first act, the most complicated one, all went well. But at the beginning of the second everything threatened to come to a standstill. I must tell you that my father hit upon the novel idea of introducing a kind of dummy, or lay figure, on which this idiotic Nathalie lavishes all her caresses. The young fellow, who is in love with Nathalie, contrives to take the dummy's place; consequently, in order to preserve some semblance of truth, and not to make Nathalie appear more idiotic than she is already, there ought to be a kind of likeness between the dummy and the lover. I know not whether the interpreter had been at fault, or whether in the hurry-scurry I had forgotten all about the dummy, but a few minutes before the rise of the curtain I discovered that there was no dummy. 'You must do the dummy,' I said to Pierre, my servant, 'and I'll pretend to carry you on.' Pierre nodded a silent assent, and immediately began to don the costume, seeing which I had the curtain rung up, and went on to the stage. I was not very comfortable, though, for I heard a violent altercation going on behind the scenes, the cause of which I failed to guess. I kept dancing and dancing, getting near to the wings every now and then, to ask whether Pierre was ready. He seemed to me inordinately long in changing his dress, but the delay was owing to something far more serious than his careful preparation for the part. Pierre had a pair of magnificent whiskers, and the young fellow who enacted the lover had not a hair on his face. Pierre was ready to go on, when the manager noticed the difference. 'Stop!' he shouted; 'that won't do. You must have your whiskers taken off.' Pierre indignantly refused. The manager endeavoured to persuade him to make the sacrifice, but in vain, until at last he had him held down on a chair by two stalwart Scotchmen while the barber did his work.

"All this had taken time, but the public did not grow impatient. They would have been very difficult to please indeed had they behaved otherwise, for I never danced to any audience as I did to them. One of the few pleasant recollections in my life is that evening at Perth; and, curiously enough, Pierre, who is still with me, refers to it with great enthusiasm, notwithstanding the cavalier treatment inflicted upon him. It was his first and last appearance on any stage."

Here is another story Taglioni told me on a subsequent occasion. I have often wondered since whether Macaulay would not have been pleased with it even more than I was.

"The St. Petersburg theatrical season of '24-'25 had been particularly brilliant, and nowhere more so than at the Italian Opera. I came away laden with presents, among others one from the Czar—a magnificent necklet of very fine pearls. When the theatre closed at Lent, I was very anxious to get away, in spite of the inclement season, and notwithstanding the frequent warnings that the roads were not safe. Whenever the conversation turned on that topic, the name of Trischka was sure to crop up; he, in fact, was the leader of a formidable band of highwaymen, compared with whose exploits those of all the others seemed to sink into insignificance. Trischka had been steward to Prince Paskiwiecz, and was spoken of as a very intelligent fellow. Nearly every one with whom I came in contact had seen him while he was still at St. Petersburg, and had a good word to say for him. His manners were reported to be perfect; he spoke French and German very fairly; and, most curious of all, he was an excellent dancer. Some went even as far as to say that if he had adopted that profession, instead of scouring the highways, he would have made a fortune. By all accounts he never molested poor people, and the rich, whom he laid under contribution, had never to complain of violent treatment either in words or deeds—nay, more, he never took all they possessed from his victims, he was content to share and share alike. But papa n'écoutait pas de cet' oreille là; papa était très peu partageur; and, truth to tell, I was taking away a great deal of money from St. Petersburg—which was perhaps another reason why papa did not see the necessity of paying tithes to Trischka. If we had followed papa's advice, we should have either applied to the Czar for an armed escort, or else delayed our departure till the middle of the summer, though he failed to see that the loss of my engagements elsewhere would have amounted to a serious item also. But papa had got it into his head not to part with any of the splendid presents I had received; they were mostly jewels, and people who do not know papa can form no idea what they meant to him. However, as we were plainly told that Trischka conducted his operations all the year round, that we were as likely to be attacked by him in summer as in winter, papa reluctantly made up his mind to go in the beginning of April. Papa provided himself with a pair of large pistols that would not have hurt a cat, and were the laughing-stock of all those who accompanied us for the first dozen miles on our journey; for I had made many friends, and they insisted on doing this. We had two very roomy carriages. My father, my maid, two German violinists, and myself were in the first; the second contained our luggage.

"At the first change of horses after Pskoff, the postmaster told us that Trischka and his band had been seen a few days previously on the road to Dunabourg, at the same time, he seemed to think very lightly of the matter, and, addressing himself particularly to me, opined that, with a little diplomacy on my part and a good deal of sang-froid, I might be let off very cheaply. All went well until the middle of the next night, when all of a sudden, in the thick of a dense forest, our road was barred by a couple of horsemen, while a third opened the door of our carriage. It was Trischka himself. 'Mademoiselle Taglioni?' he said in very good German, lifting his hat. 'I am Mademoiselle Taglioni,' I replied in French. 'I know,' he answered, with a deeper bow than before. 'I was told you were coming this way. I am sorry, mademoiselle, that I could not come to St. Petersburg to see you dance, but as chance has befriended me, I hope you will do me the honour to dance before me here.' 'How can I dance here, in this road, monsieur?' I said beseechingly. 'Alas, mademoiselle, I have no drawing-room to offer you,' he replied, still as polite as ever. 'Nevertheless,' he continued, 'if you think it cannot be done, I shall be under the painful necessity of confiscating your carriages and luggage, and of sending you back on foot to the nearest post-town.' 'But, monsieur,' I protested, 'the road is ankle-deep in mud.' 'Truly,' he laughed, showing a beautiful set of teeth, 'but your weight won't make any difference; besides, I dare say you have some rugs and cloths with you in the other carriage, and my men will only be too pleased to spread them on the ground.'

"Seeing that all my remonstrance would be in vain, I jumped out of the carriage. While the rugs were being laid down, my two companions, the violinists, tuned their instruments, and even papa was prevailed upon to come out, though he was sulky and never spoke a word.

"I danced for about a quarter of an hour, and I honestly believe that I never had such an appreciative audience either before or afterwards. Then Trischka led me back to the carriage, and, simply lifting his hat, bade me adieu. 'I keep the rugs, mademoiselle. I will never part with them,' he said. The last I saw of him, when our carriages were turning a bend in the road, was a truly picturesque figure on horseback, waving his hand."

More than eight years elapsed before I met Taglioni again, and then she looked absolutely like an old woman, though she was under fifty. It was at the Comte (afterwards Duc) de Morny's, in '52, and, if I remember rightly, almost immediately after his resignation as Minister of the Interior. Taglioni and Mdlle. Rachel were the only women present. Just as we were sitting down to dinner, Count Gilbert de Voisins came in, and took the next seat but one on my left which had been reserved for him. We were on friendly, though not on very intimate terms. He was evidently not aware of the presence of his wife, for after a few minutes he asked his neighbour, pointing to her, "Who is this governess-looking old maid?" He told him. He showed neither surprise nor emotion; but, if an artist could have been found to sketch his face there, its perfect blank would have been more amusing than either. He seemed, as it were, to consult his recollections; then he said, "Is it? It may be, after all;" and went on eating his dinner. His wife acted less diplomatically. She recognized him at once, and made a remark to her host in a sufficiently loud voice to be overheard, which was not in good taste, the more that De Morny, notwithstanding his many faults, was not the man to have invited both for the mere pleasure of playing a practical joke. In fact, I have always credited De Morny with the good intention of bringing about a reconciliation between the two; but the affair was hopeless from the very beginning, after Taglioni's exhibition of temper. I am far from saying that Count Gilbert would have been more tractable if it had not occurred, but his spouse shut the door at once upon every further attempt in that direction. Nevertheless, whether out of sheer devilry or from a wish to be polite, he went up to her after dinner, accompanied by a friend, who introduced him as formally as if he and she had never seen one another. It was at a moment when the Comte de Morny was out of the room, because I feel certain that he was already sorry then for what he had endeavoured to do, and had washed his hands of the whole affair. Taglioni made a stately bow. "I am under the impression," she said, "that I have had the honour of meeting you before, about the year 1832." With this she turned away. Let any playwright reproduce that scene in a farcical or comedy form, and I am sure that three-fourths of his audience would scout it as too exaggerated, and yet every incident of it is absolutely true.

Among my most pleasant recollections of those days is that connected with Von Flotow, the future composer of "Martha." In appearance he was altogether unlike the traditional musician; he looked more like a stalwart officer of dragoons. Though of noble origin, and with a very wealthy father, there was a time when he had a hard struggle for existence. Count von Flotow, his father, and an old officer of Blucher, was nearly as much opposed to his son becoming a musician as Frederick the Great's. Nevertheless, at the instance of Flotow's mother, he was sent to Paris at the age of sixteen, and entered the Conservatoire, then under the direction of Reicha. His term of apprenticeship was not to extend beyond two years, "for," said the count, "it does not take longer for the rawest recruit to become a good soldier." "That will give you a fair idea," remarked Von Flotow to me afterwards, "how much he understood about it. He had an ill-disguised contempt for any music which did not come up to his ideal. His ideal was that performed by the drum, the fife, and the bugle. And the very fact of Germany ringing a few years later with the names of Meyerbeer and Halévy made matters worse instead of mending them. His feudal pride would not allow of his son's entering a profession the foremost ranks of which were occupied by Jews. 'Music,' he said, 'was good enough for bankers' sons and the like,' and he considered that Weber had cast a slur upon his family by adopting it."

The two years grudgingly allowed by Count von Flotow for his son's musical education were interrupted by the revolution of 1830, and the young fellow had to return home before he was eighteen, because, in his father's opinion, "he had not given a sign of becoming a great musician;" in other words, he had not written an opera or anything else which had attracted public notice. However, towards the beginning of 1831, the count took his son to Paris once more; "and though Meyerbeer nor Halévy were not so famous then as they were destined to become within the next three years, their names were already sufficiently well known to have made an introduction valuable. It would not have been difficult to obtain such." My father would not hear of it. 'I will not have my son indebted for anything to a Jew,' he said; and I am only quoting this instance of prejudice to you because it was not an individual but a typical one among my father's social equals. The remark about 'his son's entering a profession in which two Jews had carried off the highest prizes' is of a much later date. Consequently we landed in Paris, provided with letters of introduction to M. de Saint-Georges.[11] Clever, accomplished, refined as was M. de Saint-Georges, he was scarcely the authority a father with serious intentions about his son's musical career would have consulted; he was a charming, skilful librettist and dramatist, a thorough man of the world in the best sense of the word, but absolutely incapable of judging the higher qualities of the composer. Nevertheless, I owe him much; but for him I should have been dragged back to Germany there and then; but for him I should have been compelled to go back to Germany five years later, or starved in the streets of Paris.

"My father's interview with M. de Saint-Georges, and my first introduction to him," said Flotow on another occasion, "were perhaps the most comical scenes ever enacted off the stage. You know my old friend, and have been to his rooms, so I need not describe him nor his surroundings to you. You have never seen my father; but, to give you an idea of what he was like, I may tell you that he was an enlarged edition of myself. A bold rider, a soldier and a sportsman, fairly well educated, but upon the whole a very rough diamond, and, I am afraid, with a corresponding contempt for the elegant and artistic side of Paris life. You may, therefore, picture to yourself the difference between the two men—M. de Saint-Georges in a beautiful silk dressing-gown and red morocco slippers, sipping chocolate from a dainty porcelain cup; my father, who, contrary to German custom, had always refused to don that comfortable garment, and who, to my knowledge, had never in his life tasted chocolate. For the moment I thought that everything was lost. I was mistaken.

"'Monsieur,' said my father in French, which absolutely creaked with the rust of age, 'I have come to ask your advice and a favour besides. My son desires to become a musician. Is it possible?'

"'There is no reason why he should not be,' replied M. de Saint-Georges, 'provided he has a vocation.'

"'Vocation may mean obstinacy,' remarked my father. 'But let us suppose the reverse—that obstinacy means vocation: how long would it take him to prove that he has talent?'

"'It is difficult to say—five years at least.'

"'And two he has already spent at the Conservatoire will make seven. I hope he will not be like Jacob, who, after that period of waiting, found that they had given him the wrong goddess!' growled my father, who could be grimly humorous when he liked. 'Five years more be it, then, but not a single day longer. If by that time he has not made his mark, I withdraw his allowance. I thank you for your advice; and now I will ask a favour. Will you kindly supply my place—that is, keep an eye upon him, and do the best you can for him? Remember, he is but twenty. It is hard enough that I cannot make a soldier of him; from what I have heard and from what I can see, you will prevent him from becoming less than a gentleman.'

"M. de Saint-Georges was visibly moved. 'Let me hear what he can do,' he said, 'and then I will tell you.'

"I sat down to the piano for more than an hour.

"'I will see that your son becomes a good musician, M. le Comte,' said M. de Saint-Georges.

"Next morning my father went back to Germany. Nothing would induce him to stay a single day. He said the atmosphere of Paris was vitiated.

"I need not tell you that M. de Saint-Georges kept his word as far as he was able; he kept it even more rigorously than my father had bargained for, because when, exactly on the last day of the stipulated five years, I received a letter demanding my immediate return, and informing me that my father's banker had instructions to stop all further supplies, M. de Saint-Georges bade me stay.

"'I promised to make a musician of you, and I have kept my word. But between a musician and an acknowledged musician there is a difference. I say stay!' he exclaimed.

"'How am I to stay without money?'

"'You'll earn some.'

"'How?'

An Englishman in Paris: Notes and Recollections

AN ENGLISHMANIN PARIS

CONTENTS.

AN ENGLISHMAN IN PARIS.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

AN ENGLISHMAN
IN PARIS