Recollections of Europe Part 13

I apprehend that few books are brought before the public in France, dependent only on their intrinsic merits; and the system of intrigue, which predominates in everything, is as active in this as in other interests.

In France, a book that penetrates to the provinces may be said to be popular; and as for a book coming _from_ the provinces, it is almost unheard of. The despotism of the trade on this point is unyielding.

Paris appears to deem itself the arbiter in all matters of taste and literature, and it is almost as unlikely that a new fas.h.i.+on should come from Lyon, or Bordeaux, or Ma.r.s.eilles, as that a new work should be received with favour that was published in either of those towns. The approbation of Paris is indispensable, and the publishers of the capital, a.s.sisted by their paid corps of puffers and detractors, are sufficiently powerful to prevent that potent public, to whom all affect to defer, from judging for itself.

We have lately had a proof here of the unwillingness of the Parisians to permit others to decide for them, in anything relating to taste, in a case that refers to us Americans. Madame Malibran arrived from America a few months since. In Europe she was unknown, but the great name of her father stood in her stead. Unluckily it was whispered that she had met with great success in America. America! and this, too, in conjunction with music and the opera! The poor woman was compelled to appear under the disadvantage of having brought an American reputation with her, and seriously this single fact went nigh to destroy her fortunes. Those wretches who, as Coleridge expresses it, are "animalculae, who live by feeding on the body of genius," affected to be displeased, and the public hesitated, at their suggestions, about accepting an artist from the "colonies," as they still have the audacity to call the great Republic. I have no means of knowing what sacrifices were made to the petty tyrants of the press before this woman, who has the talents necessary to raise her to the summit of her profession, was enabled to gain the favour of a "_generous and discerning public!_"

LETTER XVI.

Environs of Paris.--Village of St. Ouen.--Our House there.--Life on the River.--Parisian c.o.c.kneys.--A pretty Grisette.--Voyage across the Seine.

--A rash Adventurer.--Village Fete.--Montmorency.--View near Paris.

TO JAMES STEVENSON, ESQUIRE, ALBANY.

We have been the residents of a French village ever since the 1st of June, and it is now drawing to the close of October. We had already pa.s.sed the greater part of a summer, and entire autumn, winter and spring, within the walls of Paris, and then we thought we might indulge our tastes a little, by retreating to the fields, to catch a glimpse of country life. You will smile when I add that we are only a league from the Barriere de Clichy. This is the reason I have not before spoken of the removal, for we are in town three or four times every week, and never miss an occasion, when there is anything to be seen. I shall now proceed, however, to let you into the secret of our actual situation.

I pa.s.sed the month of May examining the environs of the capital in quest of an house. As this was an agreeable occupation, we were in no hurry; but having set up my cabriolet, we killed two birds with one stone, by making ourselves familiarly acquainted with nearly every village or hamlet within three leagues of Paris, a distance beyond which I did not wish to go.

On the side of St. Cloud, which embraces Pa.s.sy, Auteuil, and all the places that encircle the Bois de Boulogne, the Hyde Park of Paris, there are very many pleasant residences, but from one cause or another, no one suited us exactly, and we finally took a house in the village of St.

Ouen, the Runnymeade of France. When Louis XVIII. came, in 1814, to his capital, in the rear of the allies, he stopped for a few days at St.

Ouen, a league from the barriers, where there was a small chateau that was the property of the crown. Here he was met by M. de Talleyrand and others, and hence he issued the celebrated charter, that is to render France for evermore a const.i.tutional country.

The chateau has since been razed, and a pavilion erected in its place, which has been presented to the Comtesse de ----, a lady who, reversing the ordinary lot of courtiers, is said to cause majesty to live in the suns.h.i.+ne of _her_ smiles. What an appropriate and encouraging monument to rear on the birth-place of French liberty! At the opposite extremity of the village is another considerable house, that was once the dwelling of M. Necker, and is now the property and country residence of M.

Ternaux, or the _Baron_ Ternaux, if it were polite to style him thus, the most celebrated manufacturer of France. I say polite, for the mere _fanfaronnade_ of n.o.bility is little in vogue here. The wags tell a story of some one, who was formally announced as "Monsieur le Marquis d'un tel," turning short round on the servant, and exclaiming with indignation, "Marquis toi-meme!" But this story savours of the Bonapartists; for as the Emperor created neither _marquis_ nor _vicomtes_, there was a sort of affectation of a.s.suming these t.i.tles at the restoration as proofs of belonging to the old _regime_.

St. Ouen is a cl.u.s.ter of small, mean, stone houses, stretched along the right bank of the Seine, which, after making a circuit of near twenty miles, winds round so close to the town again, that they are actually constructing a basin, near the village, for the use of the capital; it being easier to wheel articles from this point to Paris, than to contend with the current and to tread its shoals. In addition to the two houses named, however, it has six or eight respectable abodes between the street and the river, one of which is our own.

This place became a princely residence about the year 1800, since which time it has been more or less frequented as such down to the 4th June, 1814, the date of the memorable charter.[21] Madame de Pompadour possessed the chateau in 1745, so you see it has been "dust to dust"

with this place, as with all that is frail.

[Footnote 21: The chateau of St. Ouen, rather less than two centuries since, pa.s.sed into the possession of the Duc de Gesvre. Dulaure gives the following,--a part of a letter from this n.o.bleman,--as a specimen of the education of a _duc_ in the seventeenth century:--"Monsieur, me trouvant oblige de randre une bonne party de largan que mais enfant ont pris de peuis qu'il sont au campane, monsieur, cela moblige a vous suplier tres humblemant monsieur de me faire la gra.s.se de commander monsieur quant il vous plera que lon me pay la capitenery de Monsaux monsieur vous a.s.seurant que vous mobligeres fort sansiblement monsieur comme ausy de me croire avec toute sorte de respec, etc." This beats Jack Cade out and out. The great connetable Anne de Montmorency could not write his name, and as his signature became necessary, his secretary stood over his shoulder to tell him when he had made enough _pies de mouche_ to answer the purpose.]

The village of St. Ouen, small, dirty, crowded and unsavoury as it is, has a _place_, like every other French village. When we drove into it, to look at the house, I confess to having laughed outright, at the idea of inhabiting such a hole. Two large _portes-cocheres_, however, opened from the square, and we were admitted, through the best-looking of the two, into a s.p.a.cious and an extremely neat court. On one side of the gate was a lodge for a porter, and on the other, a building to contain gardeners' tools, plants, etc. The walls that separate it from the square and the adjoining gardens are twelve or fourteen feet high, and once within them, the world is completely excluded. The width of the grounds does not exceed a hundred and fifty feet; the length, the form being that of a parallelogram, may be three hundred, or a little more; and yet in these narrow limits, which are planted _a l'Anglaise_, so well is everything contrived, that we appear to have abundance of room. The garden terminates in a terrace that overhangs the river, and, from this point, the eye ranges over a wide extent of beautiful plain, that is bounded by fine bold hills which are teeming with gray villages and _bourgs_.

The house is of stone, and not without elegance. It may be ninety feet in length, by some forty in width. The entrance is into a vestibule, which has the offices on the right, and the great staircase on the left.

The princ.i.p.al _salon_ is in front. This is a good room, near thirty feet long, fifteen or sixteen high, and has three good windows, that open on the garden. The billiard-room communicates on one side, and the _salle a manger_ on the other; next the latter come the offices again, and next the billiard-room is a very pretty little boudoir. Up stairs, are suites of bed-rooms and dressing-rooms; every thing is neat, and the house is in excellent order, and well furnished for a country residence. Now, all this I get at a hundred dollars a month, for the five summer months.

There are also a carriage-house, and stabling for three horses. The gardener and porter are paid by the proprietor. The village, however, is not in much request, and the rent is thought to be low.

Among the great advantages enjoyed by a residence in Europe, are the facilities of this nature. Furnished apartments, or furnished houses, can be had in almost every town of any size; and, owning your own linen and plate, nearly every other necessary is found you. It is true, that one sometimes misses comforts to which he has been accustomed in his own house; but, in France, many little things are found, it is not usual to meet with elsewhere. Thus, no princ.i.p.al bedroom is considered properly furnished in a good house, without a handsome secretary, and a bureau.

These two articles are as much matters of course, as are the eternal two rooms and folding doors, in New York.

This, then, has been our Tusculum since June. M. Ternaux enlivens the scene, occasionally, by a dinner; and he has politely granted us permission to walk in his grounds, which are extensive and well laid out, for the old French style. We have a neighbour on our left, name unknown, who gives suppers in his garden, and concerts that really are worthy of the grand opera. Occasionally, we get a song, in a female voice, that rivals the best of Madame Malibran's. On our right lives a staid widow, whose establishment is as tranquil as our own.

One of our great amus.e.m.e.nts is to watch the _living_ life on the river, --there is no _still_ life in France. All the washerwomen of the village a.s.semble, three days in the week, beneath our terrace, and a merrier set of _grisettes_ is not to be found in the neighbourhood of Paris. They chat, and joke, and splash, and scream from morning to night, lightening the toil by never-ceasing good humour. Occasionally an enormous scow-like barge is hauled up against the current, by stout horses, loaded to the water's edge, or one, without freight, comes dropping down the stream, nearly filling the whole river as it floats broad-side to.

There are three or four islands opposite, and, now and then, a small boat is seen paddling among them. We have even tried _punting_ ourselves, but the amus.e.m.e.nt was soon exhausted.

Sunday is a great day with us, for then the sh.o.r.e is lined with Parisians, as thoroughly c.o.c.kney as if Bow-bells could be heard in the Quartier Montmartre! These good people visit us, in all sorts of ways; some on donkeys, some in cabriolets, some in fiacres, and by far the larger portion on foot. They are perfectly inoffensive and un.o.btrusive, being, in this respect, just as unlike an American inroad from a town as can well be. These crowds pa.s.s vineyards on their way to us, unprotected by any fences. This point in the French character, however, about which so much has been said to our disadvantage, as well as to that of the English, is subject to some explanation. The statues, promenades, gardens, etc. etc. are, almost without exception, guarded by sentinels; and then there are agents of the police, in common clothes, scattered through the towns, in such numbers as to make depredations hazardous. In the country each _commune_ has one, or more, _gardes champetres_, whose sole business it is to detect and arrest trespa.s.sers. When to these are added the _gendarmes a pied_ and _a cheval_, who are constantly in motion, one sees that the risk of breaking the laws is attended with more hazard here than with us. There is no doubt, on the other hand, that the training and habits, produced by such a system of watchfulness, enter so far into the character of the people, that they cease to think of doing that which is so strenuously denied them.

Some of our visitors make their appearance in a very quaint style. I met a party the other day, among whom the following family arrangement had obtained:--The man was mounted on a donkey, with his feet just clear of the ground. The wife, a buxom brunette, was trudging afoot in the rear, accompanied by the two younger children, a boy and girl, between twelve and fourteen, led by a small dog, fastened to a string like the guide of a blind mendicant; while the eldest daughter was mounted on the crupper, maintaining her equilibrium by a masculine disposition of her lower limbs. She was a fine, rosy-cheeked _grisette_, of about seventeen; and, as they ambled along, just fast enough to keep the cur on a slow trot, her cap flared in the wind, her black eyes flashed with pleasure, and her dark ringlets streamed behind her, like so many silken pennants. She had a ready laugh for every one she met, and a sort of malicious pleasure in asking, by her countenance, if they did not wish they too had a donkey? As the seat was none of the most commodious, she had contrived to make a pair of stirrups of her petticoats. The gown was pinned up about her waist, leaving her knees, instead of her feet, as the _points d'appui_. The well-turned legs, and the ankles, with such a _chaussure_ as at once marks a Parisienne, were exposed to the admiration of a _parterre_ of some hundreds of idle wayfarers. Truly, it is no wonder that sculptors abound in this country, for capital models are to be found, even in the highways. The donkey was the only one who appeared displeased with this _monture_, and he only manifested dissatisfaction by lifting his hinder extremities a little, as the man occasionally touched his flanks with a nettle, that the a.s.s would much rather have been eating.

Not long since I pa.s.sed half an hour on the terrace, an amused witness of the perils of a voyage across the Seine in a punt. The adventurers were a _bourgeois_, his wife, sister, and child. Honest Pierre, the waterman, had conditioned to take the whole party to the island opposite and to return them safe to the main for the modic.u.m of five sous. The old fox invariably charged me a franc for the same service. There was much demurring, and many doubts about encountering the risk; and more than once the women would have receded, had not the man treated the matter as a trifle. He affirmed _parole d'honneur_ that his father had crossed the Maine a dozen times, and no harm had come of it! This encouraged them, and, with many pretty screams, _mes fois_, and _oh, Dieu_, they finally embarked. The punt was a narrow scow that a ton weight would not have disturbed, the river was so low and sluggish that it might have been forded two-thirds of the distance, and the width was not three hundred feet. Pierre protested that the danger was certainly not worth mentioning, and away he went, as philosophical in appearance as his punt. The voyage was made in safety, and the bows of the boat had actually touched the sh.o.r.e on its return, before any of the pa.s.sengers ventured to smile. The excursion, like most travelling, was likely to be most productive of happiness by the recollections. But the women were no sooner landed, than that rash adventurer, the husband, brother, and father, seized an oar, and began to ply it with all his force. He merely wished to tell his _confreres_ of the Rue Montmartre how a punt might be rowed. Pierre had gallantly landed to a.s.sist the ladies, and the boat, relieved of its weight, slowly yielded to the impulse of the oar, and inclined its bows from the land. "Oh! Edouard! mon mari! mon frere!--que fais-tu?" exclaimed the ladies. "Ce n'est rien," returned the man, puffing, and giving another l.u.s.ty sweep, by which he succeeded in forcing the punt fully twenty feet from the sh.o.r.e. "Edouard! cher Edouard!" "Laisse-moi m'amuser,--je m'amuse, je m'amuse," cried the husband in a tone of indignant remonstrance. But Edouard, a tight, sleek little _epicier_, of about five-and-thirty, had never heard that an oar on each side was necessary in a boat, and the harder he pulled the less likely was he to regain the sh.o.r.e. Of this he began to be convinced, as he whirled more into the centre of the current; and his efforts now really became frantic, for his imagination probably painted the horrors of a distant voyage in an unknown bark to an unknown land, and all without food or compa.s.s. The women screamed, and the louder they cried, the more strenuously he persevered in saying, "Laisse-moi m'amuser--je m'amuse, je m'amuse." By this time the perspiration poured from the face of Edouard, and I called to the imperturbable Pierre, who stood in silent admiration of his punt while playing such antics, and desired him to tell the man to put his oar on the bottom, and to push the boat ash.o.r.e. "Oui, Monsieur," said the rogue, with a leer, for he remembered the francs, and we soon had our adventurer safe on _terra firma_ again.

Then began the tender expostulations, the affectionate reproaches, and the kind injunctions for the truant to remember that he was a husband and a father. Edouard, secretly cursing the punt and all rivers in his heart, made light of the matter, however, protesting to the last that he had only been enjoying himself.

We have had a fete too; for every village in the vicinity of Paris has its fete. The square was filled with whirligigs and flying-horses, and all the ingenious contrivances of the French to make and to spend a sou pleasantly. There was service in the parish church, at which our neighbours sang in a style fit for St. Peter's, and the villagers danced quadrilles on the green with an air that would be thought fine in many a country drawing-room.

I enjoy all this greatly; for, to own the truth, the crowds and mannered sameness of Paris began to weary me. Our friends occasionally come from town to see us, and we make good use of the cabriolet. As we are near neighbours to St. Denis, we have paid several visits to the tombs of the French kings, and returned each time less pleased with most of the unmeaning obsequies that are observed in their vaults. There was a ceremony, not long since, at which the royal family and many of the great officers of the court a.s.sisted, and among others M. de Talleyrand.

The latter was in the body of the church, when a man rushed upon him and actually struck him, or shoved him to the earth, using at the same time language that left no doubt of the nature of the a.s.sault. There are strange rumours connected with the affair. The a.s.sailant was a Marquis de ----, and it is reported that his wrongs, real or imaginary, are connected with a plot to rob one of the dethroned family of her jewels, or of some crown jewels, I cannot say which, at the epoch of the restoration. The journals said a good deal about it at the time, but events occur so fast here that a quarrel of this sort produces little sensation. I pretend to no knowledge of the merits of this affair, and only give a general outline of what was current in the public prints at the time.

We have also visited Enghien, and Montmorency. The latter, as you know already, stands on the side of a low mountain, in plain view of Paris.

It is a town of some size, with very uneven streets, some of them being actually sharp acclivities, and a Gothic church that is seen from afar and that is well worth viewing near by. These quaint edifices afford us deep delight, by their antiquity, architecture, size, and pious histories. What matters it to us how much or how little superst.i.tion may blend with the rites, when we know and feel that we are standing in a nave that has echoed with orisons to G.o.d, for a thousand years! This of Montmorency is not quite so old, however, having been rebuilt only three centuries since.

Dulaure, a severe judge of aristocracy, denounces the pretension of the Montmorencies to be the _Premiers Barons Chretiens_, affirming that they were neither the first barons, nor the first Christians, by a great many. He says, that the extravagant t.i.tle has most probably been a war-cry, in the time of the crusaders. According to his account of the family it originated, about the year 1008, in a certain Borchard, who, proving a bad neighbour to the Abbey of St. Denis, the va.s.sals of which he was in the habit of robbing, besides, now and then, despoiling a monk, the king caused his fortress in the Isle St. Denis to be razed; after which, by a treaty, he was put in possession of the mountain hard by, with permission to erect another hold near a fountain, at a place called in the charters, Montmorenciac.u.m. Hence the name, and the family.

This writer thinks that the first castle must have been built of wood!

We took a road that led us up to a bluff on the mountain, behind the town, where we obtained a new and very peculiar view of Paris and its environs. I have said that the French towns have no straggling suburbs.

A few winehouses (to save the _octroi_) are built near the gates, compactly, as in the town itself, and there the buildings cease as suddenly as if pared down by a knife. The fields touch the walls, in many places, and between St. Ouen and the guinguettes and winehouses, at the Barriere de Clichy, a distance of two miles, there is but a solitary building. A wide plain separates Paris, on this side, from the mountains, and of course our view extended across it. The number of villages was absolutely astounding. Although I did not attempt counting them, I should think not fewer than a hundred were in sight, all grey, picturesque, and cl.u.s.tering round the high nave and church tower, like chickens gathering beneath the wing. The day was clouded, and the hamlets rose from their beds of verdure, sombre but distinct, with their faces of wall, now in subdued light, and now quite shaded, resembling the glorious _darks_ of Rembrandt's pictures.

LETTER XVII.

Rural Drives.--French Peasantry.--View of Montmartre.--The Boulevards.

--The Abattoirs.--Search for Lodgings.--A queer Breakfast.--Royal Progresses and Magnificence.--French Carriages and Horses.--Modes of Conveyance.--Drunkenness.--French Criminal Justice.--Marvellous Stories of the Police.

To CAPT. M. PERRY, U.S.N.

I am often in the saddle since our removal to St. Ouen. I first commenced the business of exploring in the cabriolet, with my wife for a companion, during which time, several very pretty drives, of whose existence one journeying along the great roads would form no idea, were discovered. At last, as these became exhausted, I mounted, and p.r.i.c.ked into the fields. The result has been a better knowledge of the details of ordinary rural life, in this country, than a stranger would get by a residence, after the ordinary fas.h.i.+on, of years.

I found the vast plain intersected by roads as intricate as the veins of the human body. The comparison is not unapt, by the way, and may be even carried out much further; for the _grandes routes_ can be compared to the arteries, the _chemins vicinaux_, or cross-roads, to the veins, and the innumerable paths that intersect the fields, in all directions, to the more minute blood-vessels, circulation being the object common to all.

I mount my horse and gallop into the fields at random, merely taking care not to quit the paths. By the latter, one can go in almost any direction; and as they are very winding there is a certain pleasure in following their sinuosities, doubtful whither they tend. Much of the plain is in vegetables, for the use of Paris; though there is occasionally a vineyard, or a field of grain. The weather has become settled and autumnal, and is equally without the chilling moisture of the winter, or the fickleness of the spring. The kind-hearted peasants see me pa.s.s among them without distrust, and my salutations are answered with cheerfulness and civility. Even at this trifling distance from the capital, I miss the brusque ferocity that is so apt to characterise the deportment of its lower cla.s.ses, who are truly the people that Voltaire has described as "ou singes, ou tigres." Nothing, I think, strikes an American more than the marked difference between the town and country of France. With us, the towns are less town-like, and the country less country-like, than is usually the case. Our towns are provincial from the want of tone that can only be acquired by time, while it is a fault with our country to wish to imitate the towns. I now allude to habits only, for nature at home, owing to the great abundance of wood, is more strikingly rural than in any other country I know. The inhabitant of Paris can quit his own door in the centre of the place, and after walking an hour he finds himself truly in the country, both as to the air of external objects, and as to the manners of the people. The influence of the capital doubtless has some little effect on the latter, but not enough to raise them above the ordinary rusticity, for the French peasants are as rustic in their appearance and habits as the upper cla.s.ses are refined.

One of my rides is through the plain that lies between St. Ouen and Montmartre, ascending the latter by its rear to the windmills that, night and day, are whirling their ragged arms over the capital of France. Thence I descend into the town by the carriage road. A view from this height is like a glimpse into the pages of history; for every foot of land that it commands, and more than half the artificial accessories, are pregnant of the past. Looking down into the fissures between the houses, men appear the mites they are; and one gets to have a philosophical indifference to human vanities by obtaining these bird's-eye views of them in the ma.s.s. It was a happy thought that first suggested the summits of mountains for religious contemplation; nor do I think the father of evil discovered his usual sagacity when he resorted to such a place for the purposes of selfish temptation: perhaps, however, it would be better to say, he betrayed the grovelling propensities of his own nature. The cathedral of Notre Dame should have been reared on this n.o.ble and isolated height, that the airs of heaven might whisper through its fane, breathing the chaunts in honour of G.o.d.

Dismounting manfully, I have lately undertaken a far more serious enterprise--that of making the entire circuit of Paris on foot. My companion was our old friend Captain ----. We met by appointment at eleven o'clock, just without the Barriere de Clichy, and ordering the carriage to come for us at five, off we started, taking the direction of the eastern side of the town. You probably know that what are commonly called the _boulevards_ of Paris, are no more than a circular line of wide streets through the very heart of the place, which obtain their common appellation from the fact that they occupy the sites of the ancient walls. Thus the street within this circuit is called by its name, whatever it may happen to be, and if continued without the circuit, the term of _faubourg_ or suburb is added; as in the case of the Rue St. Honore and the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore, the latter being strictly a continuation of the former, but lying without the site of the ancient walls. As the town has increased, it has been found necessary to enlarge its _enceinte_, and the walls are now encircled with wide avenues that are called the outer _boulevards_. There are avenues within and without the walls, and immediately beneath them; and in many places both are planted. Our route was on the exterior.

We began the march in good spirits, and by twelve we had handsomely done our four miles and a half. Of course we pa.s.sed the different _barrieres_, and the gate of Pere Lachaise. The captain commenced with great vigour, and for near two hours, as he expressed himself, he had me a little on his lee quarter; not more, however, he thought, than was due to his superior rank, for he had once been my senior as a mids.h.i.+pman. At the Barriere du Trone we were compelled to diverge a little from the wall, in order to get across the river by the Pont d'Austerlitz. By this time I had ranged up abeam of the commodore, and I proposed that we should follow the river up as far as the wall again, in order to do our work honestly; but to this he objected that he had no wish to puzzle himself with spherical trigonometry; that plane sailing was his humour at the moment; and that he had, moreover, just discovered that one of his boots pinched his foot. Accordingly we proceeded straight from the bridge, not meeting the wall again until we were beyond the _abattoir_.

These _abattoirs_ are slaughter-houses, that Napoleon caused to be built near the walls, in some places within, and in others without them, according to the different localities. There are five or six of them, that of Montmartre being the most considerable. They are kept in excellent order, and the regulations respecting them appear to be generally good. The butchers sell their meats, in shops, all over the town, a general custom in Europe, and one that has more advantages than disadvantages, as it enables the inhabitant to order a meal at any moment. This independence in the mode of living distinguishes all the large towns of this part of the world from our own; for I greatly question if there be any civilized people among whom the individual is as much obliged to consult the habits and tastes of _all_, in gratifying his own, as in free and independent America. A part of this uncomfortable feature in our domestic economy is no doubt the result of circ.u.mstances unavoidably connected with the condition of a young country; but a great deal is to be ascribed to the practice of referring everything to the public, and not a little to those religious sects who extended their supervision to all the affairs of life, that had a chief concern in settling the country, and who have entailed so much that is inconvenient and ungraceful (I might almost say, in some instances, _disgraceful_) on the nation, blended with so much that forms its purest sources of pride. Men are always an inconsistent medley of good and bad.

The captain and myself had visited the _abattoir_ of Montmartre only a few days previously to this excursion, and we had both been much gratified with its order and neatness. But an unfortunate pile of hocks, hoofs, tallow, and nameless fragments of carca.s.ses, had caught my companion's eye. I found him musing over this _omnium gatherum_, which he protested was worse than a bread-pudding at Saratoga. By some process of reasoning that was rather material than philosophical, he came to the conclusion that the substratum of all the extraordinary compounds he had met with at the _restaurans_ was derived from this pile, and he swore as terribly as any of "our army in Flanders," that not another mouthful would he touch, while he remained in Paris, if the dish put his knowledge of natural history at fault. He had all along suspected he had been eating cats and vermin, but his imagination had never pictured to him such a store of abominations for the _ca.s.serole_ as were to be seen in this pile. In vain I asked him if he did not find the dishes good.

Cats might be good for anything he knew, but he was too old to change his habits. On the present occasion, he made the situation of the Abattoir d'Ivry an excuse for not turning up the river by the wall. I do not think, however, we gained anything in the distance, the _detour_ to cross the bridge more than equalling the ground we missed.

We came under the wall again at the Barriere de Ville Juif, and followed it, keeping on the side next the town until we fairly reached the river once more, beyond Vaugirard. Here we were compelled to walk some distance to cross the Pont de Jena, and again to make a considerable circuit through Pa.s.sy, on account of the gardens, in order to do justice to our task. About this time the commodore fairly fell astern; and he discovered that the other boot was too large. I kept talking to him over my shoulder, and cheering him on, and he felicitated me on frogs agreeing so well with my const.i.tution. At length we came in at the Barriere de Clichy, just as the clocks struck three, or in four hours, to a minute, from the time we had left the same spot. We had neither stopped, eaten, nor drunk a mouthful. The distance is supposed to be about eighteen miles, but I can hardly think it is so much, for we went rather further than if we had closely followed the wall.