In the Days of My Youth Part 46

"Yes--don't you know Molino's--the large swimming-school by the Pont Neuf. It's a glorious morning for a plunge in the Seine."

A plunge in the Seine! Now, given a warm bed, a chilly autumn morning, and a decided inclination to quote the words of the sluggard, and "slumber again," could any proposition be more inopportune, savage, and alarming? I shuddered; I protested; I resisted; but in vain.

"I shall be up again in less time than it will take you to tell your beads, _mon gaillard_" said Muller the ferocious, as, having captured my Napoleon, he prepared to go down and liquidate with number One Thousand and Eleven. "And it's of no use to bolt me out, because I shall hammer away till you let me in, and that will wake your fellow-lodgers. So let me find you up, and ready for the fray."

And then, execrating Muller, and Molino, and Molino's bath, and Molino's customers, and all Molino's ancestors from the period of the deluge downwards, I reluctantly complied.

The air was brisk, the sky cloudless, the sun coldly bright; and the city wore that strange, breathless, magical look so peculiar to Paris at early morning. The shops were closed; the pavements deserted; the busy thoroughfares silent as the avenues of Pere la Chaise. Yet how different from the early stillness of London! London, before the world is up and stirring, looks dead, and sullen, and melancholy; but Paris lies all beautiful, and bright, and mysterious, with a look as of dawning smiles upon her face; and we know that she will wake presently, like the Sleeping Beauty, to sudden joyousness and activity.

Our road lay for a little way along the Boulevards, then down the Rue Vivienne, and through the Palais Royal to the quays; but long ere we came within sight of the river this magical calm had begun to break up.

The shop-boys in the Palais Royal were already taking down the shutters--the great book-stall at the end of the Galerie Vitree showed signs of wakefulness; and in the Place du Louvre there was already a detachment of brisk little foot-soldiers at drill. By the time we had reached the open line of the quays, the first omnibuses were on the road; the water-carriers were driving their carts and blowing their shrill little bugles; the washer-women, hard at work in their gay, oriental-looking floating kiosques, were hammering away, mallet in hand, and chattering like millions of magpies; and the early matin-bell was ringing to prayers as we pa.s.sed the doors of St. Germain L'Auxerrois.

And now we were skirting the Quai de l'ecole, looking down upon the bath known in those days as Molino's--a hugh, floating quadrangular structure, surrounded by trellised arcades and rows of dressing-rooms, with a divan, a cafe restaurant, and a permanent corps of cooks and hair-dressers on the establishment. For your true Parisian has ever been wedded to his Seine, as the Venetian to his Adriatic; and the ecole de Natation was then, as now, a lounge, a reading-room, an adjunct of the clubs, and one of the great inst.i.tutions of the capital.

Some bathers, earlier than ourselves, were already sauntering about the galleries in every variety of undress, from the simple _calecon_ to the gaudiest version of Turkish robe and Algerian _kepi_. Some were smoking; some reading the morning papers; some chatting in little knots; but as yet, with the exception of two or three school-boys (called, in the _argot_ of the bath, _moutards_), there were no swimmers in the water.

With some of these loungers Muller exchanged a nod or a few words as we pa.s.sed along the platform; but shook hands cordially with a bronzed, stalwart man, dressed like a Venetian gondolier in the frontispiece to a popular ballad, with white trousers, blue jacket, anchor b.u.t.tons, red sash, gold ear-rings, and great silver buckles in his shoes. Muller introduced this romantic-looking person to me as "Monsieur Barbet."

"My friend, Monsieur Barbet," said he, "is the prince of swimming-masters. He is more at home in the water than on land, and knows more about swimming than a fish. He will calculate you the specific gravity of the heaviest German metaphysician at a glance, and is capable of floating even the works of Monsieur Thiers, if put to the test."

"Monsieur can swim?" said the master, addressing me, with a nautical sc.r.a.pe.

"I think so," I replied.

"Many gentlemen think so," said Monsieur Barbet, "till they find themselves in the water."

"And many who wish to be thought accomplished swimmers never venture into it on that account," added Muller. "You would scarcely suppose," he continued, turning to me, "that there are men here--regular _habitues_ of the bath--who never go into the water, and yet give themselves all the airs of practised bathers. That tall man, for instance, with the black beard and striped _peignoir_, yonder--there's a fellow who comes once or twice a week all through the season, goes through the ceremony of undressing, smokes, gossips, criticises, is looked up to as an authority, and has never yet been seen off the platform. Then there's that bald man in the white robe--his name's Giroflet--a retired stockbroker. Well, that fellow robes himself like an ancient Roman, puts himself in cla.s.sical att.i.tudes, affects taciturnity, models himself upon Brutus, and all that sort of thing; but is as careful not to get his feet wet as a cat. Others, again, come simply to feed. The restaurant is one of the choicest in Paris, with this advantage over Vefour or the Trois Freres, that it is the only place where you may eat and drink of the best in hot weather, with nothing on but the briefest of _calecons_"

Thus chattering, Muller took me the tour of the bath, which now began to fill rapidly. We then took possession of two little dressing-rooms no bigger than sentry-boxes, and were presently in the water.

The scene now became very animated. Hundreds of eccentric figures crowded the galleries--some absurdly fat, some ludicrously thin; some old, some young; some bow-legged, some knock-kneed; some short, some tall; some brown, some yellow; some got up for effect in gorgeous wrappers; and all more or less hideous.

"An amusing sight, isn't it?" said Muller, as, having swum several times round the bath, we sat down for a few moments on one of the flights of steps leading down to the water.

"It is a sight to disgust one for ever with human-kind," I replied.

"And to fill one with the profoundest respect for one's tailor. After all, it's broad-cloth makes the man."

"But these are not men--they are caricatures."

"Every man is a caricature of himself when you strip him," said Muller, epigrammatically. "Look at that scarecrow just opposite. He pa.s.ses for an Adonis, _de par le monde_."

I looked and recognised the Count de Rivarol, a tall young man, an _elegant_ of the first water, a curled darling of society, a professed lady-killer, whom I had met many a time in attendance on Madame de Marignan. He now looked like a monkey:--

.... "long, and lank and brown, As in the ribb'd sea sand!"

"Gracious heavens!" I exclaimed, "what would become of the world, if clothes went out of fas.h.i.+on?"

"Humph!--one half of us, my dear fellow, would commit suicide."

At the upper end of the bath was a semicircular platform somewhat loftier than the rest, called the Amphitheatre. This, I learned, was the place of honor. Here cl.u.s.tered the _elite_ of the swimmers; here they discussed the great principles of their art, and pa.s.sed judgment on the performances of those less skilful than themselves. To the right of the Amphitheatre rose a slender spiral staircase, like an openwork pillar of iron, with a tiny circular platform on the top, half surrounded by a light iron rail. This conspicuous perch, like the pillar of St. Simeon Stylites, was every now and then surmounted by the gaunt figure of some ambitious plunger who, after att.i.tudinizing awhile in the pose of Napoleon on the column Vendome, would join his hands above his head and take a tremendous "header" into the gulf below. When this feat was successfully performed, the _elite_ in the Amphitheatre applauded graciously.

And now, what with swimming, and lounging, and looking on, some two hours had slipped by, and we were both hungry and tired, Muller proposed that we should breakfast at the Cafe Procope.

"But why not here?" I asked, as a delicious breeze from the buffet came wafting by "like a steam of rich distilled perfumes."

"Because a breakfast _chez_ Molino costs at least twenty-five francs per head--BECAUSE I have credit at Procope--BECAUSE I have not a _sou_ in my pocket--and BECAUSE, milord Smithfield, I aspire to the honor of entertaining your lords.h.i.+p on the present occasion!" replied Muller, punctuating each clause of his sentence with a bow.

If Muller had not a _sou_, I, at all events, had now only one Napoleon; so the Cafe Procope carried the day.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE RUE DE L'ANCIENNE COMeDIE AND THE CAFe PROCOPE.

The Rue des Fosses-Saint-Germain-des-Pres and the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie are one and the same. As the Rue des Fosses-Saint-Germain-des-Pres, it dates back to somewhere about the reign of Philippe Auguste; and as the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie it takes its name and fame from the year 1689, when the old Theatre Francais was opened on the 18th of April by the company known as Moliere's troupe--Moliere being then dead, and Lully having succeeded him at the Theatre du Palais Royal.

In the same year, 1689, one Francois Procope, a Sicilian, conceived the happy idea of hiring a house just opposite the new theatre, and there opening a public refreshment-room, which at once became famous, not only for the excellence of its coffee (then newly introduced into France), but also for being the favorite resort of all the wits, dramatists, and beaux of that brilliant time. Here the latest epigrams were circulated, the newest scandals discussed, the bitterest literary cabals set on foot. Here Jean Jacques brooded over his chocolate; and Voltaire drank his mixed with coffee; and Dorat wrote his love-letters to Mademoiselle Saunier; and Marmontel wrote praises of Mademoiselle Clairon; and the Marquis de Bievre made puns innumerable; and Duclos and Mercier wrote satires, now almost forgotten; and Piron recited those verses which are at once his shame and his fame; and the Chevalier de St. Georges gave fencing lessons to his literary friends; and Lamothe, Freron, D'Alembert, Diderot, Helvetius, and all that wonderful company of wits, philosophers, encyclopaedists, and poets, that lit up as with a dying glory the last decades of the old _regime_, met daily, nightly, to write, to recite, to squabble, to lampoon, and some times to fight.

The year 1770 beheld, in the closing of the Theatre Francais, the extinction of a great power in the Rue des Fosses-Saint-Germain-des-Pres--for it was not, in fact, till the theatre was no more a theatre that the street changed its name, and became the Rue de L'Ancienne Comedie. A new house (to be on first opening invested with the time-honored t.i.tle of Theatre Francais, but afterwards to be known as the Odeon) was now in progress of erection in the close neighborhood of the Luxembourg. The actors, meanwhile, repaired to the little theatre of the Tuilleries. At length, in 1782,[2] the Rue de L'Ancienne Comedie was one evening awakened from its two years' lethargy by the echo of many footfalls, the glare of many flambeaux, and the rattle of many wheels; for all Paris, all the wits and critics of the Cafe Procope, all the fair shepherdesses and all the beaux seigneurs of the court of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI., were hastening on foot, in chairs, and in chariots, to the opening of the new house and the performance of a new play! And what a play! Surely, not to consider it too curiously, a play which struck, however sportively, the key-note of the coming Revolution;--a play which, for the first time, displayed society literally in a state of _boulevers.e.m.e.nt_;--a play in which the greed of the courtier, the venality of the judge, the empty glitter of the crown, were openly held up to scorn;--a play in which all the wit, audacity, and success are on the side of the _canaille_;--a play in which a lady's-maid is the heroine, and a valet canes his master, and a great n.o.bleman is tricked, outwitted, and covered with ridicule!

[2] 1782 is the date given by M. Hippolyte Lucas. Sainte-Beuve places it two years later.

This play, produced for the first time under the t.i.tle of _La Folle Journee_, was written by one Caron de Beaumarchais--a man of wit, a man of letters, a man of the people, a man of nothing--and was destined to achieve immortality under its later t.i.tle of _Le Mariage de Figaro_.

A few years later, and the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie echoed daily and nightly to the dull rumble of Revolutionary tumbrils, and the heavy tramp of Revolutionary mobs. Danton and Camille Desmoulins must have pa.s.sed through it habitually on their way to the Revolutionary Tribunal.

Charlotte Corday (and this is a matter of history) did pa.s.s through it that bright July evening, 1793, on her way to a certain gloomy house still to be seen in the adjoining Rue de l'ecole de Medecine, where she stabbed Marat in his bath.

But throughout every vicissitude of time and politics, though fas.h.i.+on deserted the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie, and actors migrated, and fresh generations of wits and philosophers succeeded each other, the Cafe Procope still held its ground and maintained its ancient reputation. The theatre (closed in less than a century) became the studio first of Gros and then of Gerard, and was finally occupied by a succession of restaurateurs but the Cafe Procope remained the Cafe Procope, and is the Cafe Procope to this day.

The old street and all belonging to it--especially and peculiarly the Cafe Procope---was of the choicest Quartier Latin flavor in the time of which I write; in the pleasant, careless, impecunious days of my youth.

A cheap and highly popular restaurateur named Pinson rented the old theatre. A _costumier_ hung out wigs, and masks, and debardeur garments next door to the restaurateur. Where the fatal tumbril used to labor past, the frequent omnibus now rattled gayly by; and the pavements trodden of old by Voltaire, and Beaumarchais, and Charlotte Corday, were thronged by a merry tide of students and grisettes. Meanwhile the Cafe Procope, though no longer the resort of great wits and famous philosophers, received within its hospitable doors, and nourished with its indifferent refreshments, many a now celebrated author, painter, barrister, and statesman. It was the general rendezvous for students of all kinds--poets of the ecole de Droit, philosophers of the ecole de Medecine, critics of the ecole des Beaux Arts. It must however be admitted that the poetry and criticism of these future great men was somewhat too liberally perfumed with tobacco, and that into their systems of philosophy there entered a considerable element of grisette.

Such, at the time of my first introduction to it, was the famous Cafe Procope.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF BREAKFAST.

"Now this, _mon cher_," said Muller, taking off his hat with a flourish to the young lady at the _comptoir_, "is the immortal Cafe Procope."

I looked round, and found myself in a dingy, ordinary sort of Cafe, in no wise differing from any other dingy, ordinary sort of Cafe in that part of Paris. The decorations were ugly enough to be modern. The ceiling was as black with gas-fumes and tobacco smoke as any other ceiling in any other estaminet in the Quartier Latin. The waiters looked as waiters always look before midday--sleepy, discontented, and unwashed. A few young men of the regular student type were scattered about here and there at various tables, reading, smoking, chatting, breakfasting, and reading the morning papers. In an alcove at the upper end of the second room (for there were two, one opening from the other) stood a blackened, broken-nosed, plaster bust of Voltaire, upon the summit of whose august wig some irreverent customer had perched a particularly rakish-looking hat. Just in front of this alcove and below the bust stood a marble-topped table, at one end of which two young men were playing dominoes to the accompaniment of the matutinal absinthe.

"And this," said Muller, with another flourish, "is the still more immortal table of the still more supremely immortal Voltaire. Here he was wont to rest his sublime elbows and sip his _demi-ta.s.se_. Here, upon this very table, he wrote that famous letter to Marie Antoinette that Freron stole, and in revenge for which he wrote the comedy called _l'Ecossaise_; but of this admirable satire you English, who only know Voltaire in his Henriade and his history of Charles the Twelfth, have probably never heard till this moment! _Eh bien_! I'm not much wiser than you--so never mind. I'll be hanged if I've ever read a line of it.

Anyhow, here is the table, and at this other end of it we'll have our breakfast."