Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2. Edwards Henry Sutherland

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СКАЧАТЬ was one of the wittiest of Parisians. He had been criticising severely a tedious tragedy called Zenobia, the work of the Abbé d’Aubignac. “It is written strictly in accordance,” said one of the Abbe’s defenders, “with the rules of Aristotle” “I don’t blame the abbé,” replied Condé, “for having followed Aristotle, but I shall never forgive Aristotle for having caused him to write so tedious a piece.”

      A Parisian grande dame, before whom a gentleman had just taken out a cigar, was asked whether she disliked the smell of tobacco. “I cannot say,” she replied. “No one has ever smoked in my presence.”

      The French are perhaps less celebrated than of old for their politeness. It was a French preacher, however, who, in a sermon delivered before Louis XIV., observed deferentially “we are nearly all mortal”; and it was a French professor who, when Louis XVIII. had requested from him some lessons in chemistry, began his explanations by saying, “These two bodies, of opposite properties, will now have the honour of combining in presence of your Majesty.”

      A Parisian, in the midst of a dissipated life, was prevailed upon to enter a monastery. Ere long he confessed to the Superior that in his moments of solitude he was constantly assailed by a desire to return to his former mode of existence. The Superior recommended him on these occasions to ring the great bell of the monastery, which would at once give him bodily exercise, distract him from evil thoughts, and be a signal to the other monks to pray for him. He rang, however, so frequently that the bell went on tolling all night, until at last representations on the subject were made from the entire neighbourhood.

      A cuirassier, who had seen and admired Horace Vernet’s military pictures, called upon the great painter and asked how much he would charge him for his portrait. “How much are you prepared to pay?” asked Vernet. “I could go as high – as high as a franc and a half,” replied the soldier. “Done,” said Vernet, and in a few minutes he had made a rapid sketch of the warrior. As the cuirassier left the room he said to a comrade who had been waiting for him at the door, “I got it done for a franc and a half. But I am sorry, now, I did not bargain. He might have taken a franc.”

      Sophie Arnould’s dog having fallen ill, the celebrated actress sent him for treatment to her friend Mesmer, inventor of the pretended science which bears his name. In a few days the German physician returned the dog with a letter certifying that it was quite well. The dog, however, died on the way home. “What a comfort it is,” said Sophie, on seeing the letter and the dead body, “to know that the poor animal died in good health.”

      On seeing the dancer, Madeleine Guimard, who was thin even to scragginess, perform in a “pas de trois” with a robust male dancer leaping about on each side of her, Sophie Arnould said that it was like two dogs fighting for a bone.

      A Parisian lady observed one day, in the presence of a man six feet high who greatly admired her, that she did not like tall men. He redoubled his attentions until, seeing her one day in rather a dreamy condition, he asked her what she was thinking about. “I am wondering how it is,” she replied, “that you seem to get smaller and smaller every day.”

      The Abbé Fouquet was Mazarin’s spy, and he threw numberless Parisians into the Bastille. One man, whom he sent there one day, saw a large dog in the court-yard of the fortress-prison. “What has that dog done?” he asked, “to get in a place like this?” “He has probably bitten the Abbé Fouquet’s dog,” replied a veteran prisoner.

      An amorous youth wished to send to the object of his affections a passionate, but at the same time witty, epistle. After cudgelling his brains for some hours to no purpose he went to a bookseller’s, bought a “complete letter-writer,” and copied out what seemed to him the most suitable missive, which he duly despatched. The young lady replied to him next day as follows: “Turn to the next page and you will find my answer.”

      A Parisian publisher, extremely annoyed at having printed a big book of which he could only sell four copies, bitterly reproached the author, telling him that his works would not even give him bread. A vigorous blow with the fist, which knocked out several of the publisher’s teeth, was the only reply made by the haughty writer. Arrested by the police, the latter, called upon to explain his conduct, extricated himself by the following ingenious defence, at which the judge, the audience, and even the plaintiff could not restrain their laughter. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I confess that I acted with rather too much warmth. I knocked out his teeth; but after all, what mischief is done? He told me my works would not give him bread, and teeth are useless when there is nothing to eat.”

      The Marquis de Favières, a great borrower and notorious for never returning his loans, went one day to the financier Samuel Bernard, and said to him: “I am going to astonish you, sir. I am the Marquis de Favières. I do not know you, and I have come to borrow five hundred louis.” “Sir,” said Bernard, “I shall astonish you still more. I know you, and I am going to lend you the money.”

      The Parisian “badaud,” an intensification of the London Cockney, has a reputation, moreover, for making blunders and bulls of the Irish kind. One of them, hazarding some speculations on the subject of astronomy, is said to have observed that the moon was a much more important orb than the sun, because the sun “comes out only in the day-time, when everyone can see perfectly well. The moon, on the other hand, shines in the darkness, when a light to guide us is really wanted.”

      Another Parisian of the dull species once wrote to a friend as follows: “A man has just called me a villain, and threatened, if I ever speak to him again, to kick me. What do you usually do in such a case?”

      A Parisian who, without knowing much about horse-flesh, had just bought a horse, was asked whether the animal was timid. “Not at all,” he replied. “He has slept three nights running in the stable by himself.” Another Parisian “sportsman” was reproached by a connoisseur with having clipped his horse’s ears. He explained that the animal was in the habit, whenever alarmed, of pricking up his ears, and that he had cut them in order to cure him of his timidity.

      A literary specimen of the Parisian Cockney is said to have written, in an historical novel, the following remarkable sentence. “Before the year 1667 Paris at night was plunged in total darkness, which was made darker than ever by the absence of gas-lights, not yet invented.”

      In a Russian history of Poland, the Poles were seriously reminded that it was not until after the partition of Poland that the streets of Warsaw were lighted with gas.

      CHAPTER VI.

      THE STREETS

The Arrangement of the Streets – System of Numbering the Houses – Street Nomenclature – Street Lamps – The Various Kinds of Vehicles in Use

      WE have already searched the streets of Paris for types of character. Let us proceed to look at one or two characteristic street objects, after first taking a general view of the streets themselves.

      The streets of Paris divide themselves into two categories: those parallel to the Seine and those at right angles to it. In the first the numbers follow the course of the stream, in the second they begin from that end of the street which is nearest to the river. The traveller, however, finding himself in any particular street, cannot in the present day tell at once to which category it belongs, inasmuch as the old distinction of colour is no longer preserved, by which the parallel streets used to be numbered in red, and those at right angles in black.

      All the Paris streets are lit up throughout the night. Early in the morning, before daylight, companies of scavengers collect the city refuse in heaps which, some hours afterwards, are carted away into the neighbouring country to fertilise the soil. During the day other scavengers clear the highways of whatever dust or mud they may have accumulated.

      Every day in summer water-carts sprinkle the principal thoroughfares. СКАЧАТЬ