Paris and the Parisians in 1835 Volume I Part 12

Blanche! que t'a-t-on fait? Quel mystere infernal!

Je crains en te touchant de te faire du mal....

Ah! la cloche du bac est la sur la muraille: Ma pauvre enfant, peux-tu m'attendre un peu, que j'aille Chercher de l'eau....

A surgeon arrives, and having examined her wound, says,

Elle est morte.

Elle a dans le flanc gauche une plaie a.s.sez forte: Le sang a du causer la mort en l'etouffant.

TRIBOULET.

J'ai tue mon enfant! J'ai tue mon enfant!

(_Il tombe sur le pave._)

FIN.

All this is very shocking; but it is not tragedy,--and it is not poetry. Yet it is what we are told has heaved the earth from under Racine!

After such a sentence as this, it must be, I know, _rococo_ to name him; but yet I would say, in his own words,

D'adorateurs zeles a peine un pet.i.t nombre Ose des premiers temps nous retracer quelque ombre; Le reste....

Se fait initier a ces honteux mysteres, Et blaspheme le nom qu'ont invoque leurs peres.

As I profess myself of the _pet.i.t nombre_, you must let me recall to your memory some of the fragments of that n.o.ble edifice which Racine raised over him, and which, as they say, has now perished under the mighty power of Victor Hugo. It will not be lost time to do this; for look where you will among the splendid material of this uprooted temple, and you will find no morsel that is not precious; nothing that is not designed, chiseled, and finished by the hand of a master.

Racine has not produced dramas from ordinary life; it was not his object to do so, nor is it the end he has attained. It is the tragedy of heroes and demi-G.o.ds that he has given us, and not of cut-purses, buffoons, and street-walkers.

If the language of Racine be poetry, that of M. Hugo is not; and wherever the one is admired, the other must of necessity be valueless.

It would be endless to attempt giving citations to prove the grace, the dignity, the majestic flow of Racine's verse; but let your eye run over "Iphigenie," for instance,--there also the loss of a daughter forms the tragic interest,--and compare such verses as those I have quoted above with any that you can find in Racine.

Hear the royal mother, for example, describe the scene that awaits her:

Un pretre environne d'une foule cruelle Portera sur ma fille une main criminelle, Dechirera son sein, et d'un oeil curieux Dans son coeur palpitant consultera les dieux; --Et moi--qui l'amenai triomphante, adoree, Je m'en retournerai, seule, et desesperee.

Surely this is of a better fabric than--

Tu sais ce coffre aupres du portrait de ta mere; L'habit est la,--je l'ai d'avance expres fait faire.

I have little doubt but that the inspired author, when this n.o.ble phrase, "expres fait faire," suggested itself, felt ready to exclaim, in the words of Philaminte and Belise--

Ah! que cet "expres fait" est d'un gout admirable!

C'est a mon sentiment un endroit impayable; J'entends la-dessous un million de mots.-- --Il est vrai qu'il dit plus de choses qu'il n'est gros.

But to take the matter seriously, let us examine a little the ground upon which this school of dramatic writers found their claim to superiority over their cla.s.sic predecessors. Is it not that they declare themselves to be more true to nature? And how do they support this claim? Were you to read through every play that M. Hugo has written--(and may you long be preserved from so great annoyance!)--I doubt if you would find a single personage with whom you could sympathise, or a single sentiment or opinion that you would feel true to the nature within you.

It would be much less difficult, I conceive, so strongly to excite the imagination by the majestic eloquence of Racine's verses as to make you conscious of fellow-feeling with his sublime personages, than to debase your very heart and soul so thoroughly as to enable you to fancy that you have anything in common with the corrupt creations of Victor Hugo.

But even were it otherwise--were the scenes imagined by this new Shakspeare more like the real villany of human nature than those of the n.o.ble writer he is said to have set aside, I should still deny that this furnished any good reason for bringing such scenes upon the stage. Why should we make a pastime of looking upon vulgar vice? Why should the lowest pa.s.sions of our nature be for ever brought out in parade before us?

"It is not and it cannot be for good."

The same reasoning might lead us to turn from the cultured garden, its marble terraces, its velvet lawns, its flowers and fruits of every clime, that we might take our pleasure in a bog--and for all consolation be told, when we slip and flounder about in its loathsome slime, that it is more natural.

I have written you a most unmerciful letter, and it is quite time that I should quit the theme, for I get angry--angry that I have no power to express in words all I feel on this subject. Would that for one short hour or so I had the pen which wrote the "Dunciad!"--I would use it--heartily--and then take my leave by saying,

"Rentre dans le neant, dont je t'ai fait sortir."

LETTER XX.

Versailles.--St. Cloud.

The Chateau de Versailles, that marvellous _chef-d'oeuvre_ of the splendid taste and unbounded extravagance of Louis le Grand, is shut up, and has been so for the last eighteen months. This is a great disappointment to such of our party as have never seen its interminable chambers and their gorgeous decorations. The reason a.s.signed for this unwonted exclusion of the public is, that the whole of this enormous pile is filled with workmen; not, however, for the purpose of restoring it as a palace for the king, but of preparing it as a sort of universal museum for the nation. The buildings are in fact too extensive for a palace; and splendid as it is, I can easily believe no king of modern days would wish to inhabit it. I have sometimes wondered that Napoleon did not take a fancy to its vastness; but, I believe, he had no great taste in the upholstering line, and preferred converting his millions into the sinews of war, to the possession of all the carving and gilding in the world.

If this projected museum, however, should be _monte_ with science, judgment and taste, and on the usual scale of French magnificence, it will be turning the costly whim of _le Grand Monarque_ to excellent account.

The works which are going on there, were mentioned at a party the other evening, when some one stated that it was the intention of the King to convert one portion of the building into a gallery of national history, that should contain pictures of all the victories which France had ever won.

The remark made in reply amused me much, it was so very French.--"Ma foi!... Mais cette galerie-la doit etre bien longue--et a.s.sez ennuyeuse pour les etrangers."

Though the chateau was closed to us, we did not therefore give up our purposed expedition to Versailles: every object there is interesting, not only from its splendour, but from the recollections it revives of scenes with whose history we are all familiar. Not only the horrors of the last century, but all the regal glories of the preceding one, are so well known to everybody, that there must have been a prodigious deal of gossip handed down to us from France, or we never could feel so much better acquainted with events which have pa.s.sed at Versailles than with any scenes that have occurred at an equal distance of time at Windsor.

But so it is; and the English go there not merely as strangers visiting a palace in a foreign land, but as pilgrims to the shrine of the princes and poets who have left their memory there, and with whose names and histories they are as familiar as if they belonged to us.

The day we pa.s.sed among the royal spectres that never fail to haunt one at this palace of recollections, was a mixture of suns.h.i.+ne and showers, and our meditations seemed to partake of the vicissitude.

It is said that the great Louis reared this stupendous dwelling in which to pa.s.s the gilded hours of his idleness, because from St.

Germain's he could see the plain of St. Denis, over which his funeral array was to pa.s.s, and the spire that marked the spot where his too precious dust was to be laid. Happy was it for him that the scutcheoned sepulchre of St. Denis was the most distant and most gloomy point to which his prophetic glance could reach! Could the great king have looked a little farther, and dreamed of the scenes which were destined to follow this dreaded pa.s.sage to his royal tomb, how would he have blessed the fate which permitted him to pa.s.s into it so peacefully!

It is quite wonderful to see how much of the elaborate decoration and fine finis.h.i.+ng of this sumptuous place remains uninjured after being visited by the most ferocious mob that ever collected together. Had they been less intent on the savage object of their mission, it is probable that they would have sated their insane rage in destroying the palace itself, and the costly decorations of its singular gardens.

Though far inferior in all ways either to the gardens of the Elector of Hesse Ca.s.sel at Wilhelmshohe, or to those of the Grand Duke of Baden at Schwetzingen, those of Versailles are still highly interesting from many causes, and have so much of majesty and pomp about them, that one cannot look upon them without feeling that only the kings of the earth could ever have had a master's right to take their pleasure therein.

Before we entered upon the orderly confusion of groves, statues, temples, and water-works through which it is necessary to be led, we made our grey-headed guide lead us round and about every part of the building while we listened to his string of interesting old stories about Louis Seize, and Marie Antoinette, and Monsieur, and le Comte d'Artois, (for he seemed to have forgotten that they had borne any other t.i.tles than those he remembered in his youth,) all of whom seemed to retain exactly the same place in his imagination that they had occupied some fifty years ago, when he was a.s.sistant to the keeper of the _orangerie_. He boasted, with a vanity as fresh as if it had been newly born, of the honours of that near approach to royalty which he had formerly enjoyed; recounted how the Queen called one of the orange-trees her own, because she fancied its blossoms sweeter than all the rest; and how from such a broad-leafed double-blossoming myrtle he had daily gathered a _bouquet_ for her majesty, which was laid upon her toilet exactly at two o'clock. This old man knew every orange-tree, its birth and history, as well as a shepherd knows his flock. The venerable father of the band dates his existence from the reign of Francois Premier, and truly he enjoys a green old age. The one surnamed Louis le Grand, who was twin brother, as he said, to that mighty monarch, looks like a youth beside it--and you are told that it has not yet attained its full growth.

Oh! could those orange-trees but speak! could they recount to us the scenes they have witnessed; could they describe to us all the beauties over whom they have shed their fragrant flowers--all the heroes, statesmen, poets, and princes who have stepped in courtly paces beneath their shade; what a world of witty wickedness, of solemn warning, and of sad reflection, we should have!

But though the orange-trees were mute, our old man talked enough for them all. He was a faithful servant to the old _regime_: and indeed it should seem that there is something in the air of Versailles favourable alike to orange-trees and loyalty; for never did I hear, while wandering amidst their aristocratic perfume, one word that was not of sound orthodox legitimate loyalty to the race for whose service they have for so many hundred years lived and bloomed. And still they blossom on, unscathed by revolution, unblighted though an usurper called them his;--happier in this than many of those who were once privileged to parade their dignity beneath their royal shade. The old servitors still move among these venerable vegetable grandees with the ceremonious air of courtiers, offering obsequious service, if not to the king himself, at least to his cousin-germans; and I am persuaded there is not one of these old serving-men, who wander about Versailles like ghosts revisiting the scenes of former happiness, who would not more humbly pull off his hat to Francois Premier or Louis le Grand in the greenhouse, than to any monarch of a younger race.

Napoleon has left less trace of himself and his giant power at Versailles than anywhere else; and the naads and hamadryads still lift their sculptured heads with such an eternity of stately grace, as makes one feel the evanescent nature of the interlude that was played among them during the empire. It is of the old race of Bourbon that the whole region is redolent. "There," said our old guide, "is the range of chambers that was occupied by the Queen ... those were the King's apartments ... there were the royal children ... there Monsieur ... and there the Comte d'Artois."

Then we were led round to the fatal balcony which overhangs the entrance. It was there that the fallen Marie Antoinette stood, her young son in her arms, and the doomed King her husband beside her, when she looked down upon the demons drunk with blood, who sought her life. I had heard all this hateful, but o'er-true history, more than once before on the same spot, and shortening the frightful detail, I hastened to leave it, though I believe the good old man would willingly have spent hours in dwelling upon it.

The day had been named as one on which the great waters were to play.

But, little as Nature has to do with this pretty exhibition, she interfered on this occasion to prevent it. There was no water. The dry winter would, they told us, probably render it impossible to play them during the whole summer.

Here was another disappointment; but we bore it heroically, and after examining and much admiring the numberless allegories which people the grounds, and to the creation of which, a poet must have been as necessary as a sculptor, we adjourned to the Trianons, there to meditate on all the ceaseless vicissitudes of female influence from Maintenon to Josephine. It is but a sad review, but it may serve well to reconcile the majority of womankind to the tranquil dreaminess of obscurity.

The next thing to be done was dining--and most wretchedly done it was: but we found something to laugh at, nevertheless; for when the wine brought to us was found too bad to drink, and we ordered better, no less than four bottles were presented to us in succession, each one increasing in price, but being precisely of the same quality. When we charged the black-eyed daughter of the house with the fact, she said with perfect good-humour, but nowise denying it, that she was very sorry they had no better. When the bill was brought, the same damsel civilly hoped that we should not think ten sous (half-a-franc) too much to pay for having opened so many bottles. Now, as three of them were firmly corked, and carefully sealed besides, we paid our ten sous without any complaining.