The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh; and the Irish Sketch Book. William Makepeace Thackeray

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СКАЧАТЬ which one could not desire improved? How good is that touch of sly indignation about the little catafalques! how rich the contrast presented by the economy of the Catholics to the splendid disregard of expense exhibited by the devout Jews! and how touching the ‘apologetical discourses on the Revolution,’ delivered by the Protestant pastors! Fancy the profound affliction of the Gardes Municipaux, the Sergens de Ville, the police-agents in plain clothes, and the troops with fixed bayonets, sobbing round the ‘expiatory monuments of a pyramidical shape, surmounted by funeral vases,’ and compelled, by sad duty, to fire into the public who might wish to indulge in the same woe! O ‘Manes of July!’ (the phrase is pretty and grammatical), why did you with sharp bullets break those Louvre windows? Why did you bayonet redcoated Swiss behind that fair white facade, and, braving cannon, musket, sabre, prospective guillotine, burst yonder bronze gates, rush through that peaceful picture-gallery, and hurl royalty, loyalty, and a thousand years of Kings, head-over-heels out of yonder Tuileries windows?

      It is, you will allow, a little difficult to say:—there is, however, one benefit that the country has gained (as for liberty of press or person, diminished taxation, a juster representation, who ever thinks of them?)—one benefit they have gained, or nearly—abolition de la peine-de-mort, namely pour délit politique—no more wicked guillotining for revolutions. A Frenchman must have his revolution—it is his nature to knock down omnibuses in the street, and across them to fire at troops of the line—it is a sin to balk it. Did not the King send off Revolutionary Prince Napoleon in a coach-and-four? Did not the jury, before the face of God and Justice, proclaim Revolutionary Colonel Vaudrey not guilty?—One may hope, soon, that if a man shows decent courage and energy in half a dozen émeutes, he will get promotion and a premium.

      I do not (although, perhaps, partial to the subject) want to talk more nonsense than the occasion warrants, and will pray you to cast your eyes over the following anecdote, that is now going the round of the papers, and respects the commutation of the punishment of that wretched, foolhardy Barbès, who, on his trial, seemed to invite the penalty which has just been remitted to him. You recollect the braggart’s speech: ‘When the Indian falls into the power of the enemy, he knows the fate that awaits him, and submits his head to the knife:—I am the Indian!’

      ‘Well——’

      ‘M. Victor Hugo was at the Opera on the night the sentence of the Court of Peers, condemning Barbès to death, was published. The great poet composed the following verses:

      ‘ “Par votre ange envolé, ainsi qu’une colombe,

       Par le royal enfant, doux et frêle roseau,

       Grâce, encore une fois! Grâce, au nom de la tombe!

       Grâce, au nom du berçeau!”[1]

      ‘M. Victor Hugo wrote the lines out instantly on a sheet of paper, which he folded, and simply despatched them to the King of the French by the penny-post.

      ‘That truly is a noble voice which can at all hours thus speak to the throne. Poetry, in old days, was called the language of the gods—it is better named now—it is the language of the kings.

      ‘But the clemency of the King had anticipated the letter of the poet. The pen of his Majesty had signed the commutation of Barbès, while that of the poet was still writing.

      ‘Louis Philippe replied to the author of Ruy Blas most graciously, that he had already subscribed to a wish so noble, and that the verses had only confirmed his previous disposition to mercy.’

      Now in countries where fools most abound, did one ever read of more monstrous palpable folly? In any country; save this, would a poet who chose to write four crack-brained verses comparing an angel to a dove, and a little boy to a reed, and calling upon the chief magistrate, in the name of the angel, or dove (the Princess Mary), in her tomb, and the little infant in his cradle, to spare a criminal, have received a ‘gracious answer’ to his nonsense? Would he have ever despatched the nonsense? and would any journalist have been silly enough to talk of ‘the noble voice that could thus speak to the throne,’ and the noble throne that could return such a noble answer to the noble voice? You get nothing done here gravely and decently. Tawdry stage-tricks are played, and braggadocio claptraps uttered, on every occasion, however sacred or solemn; in the face of death, as by Barbès with his hideous Indian metaphor; in the teeth of reason, as by M. Victor Hugo with his twopenny-post poetry; and of justice, as by the King’s absurd reply to this absurd demand! Suppose the Count of Paris to be twenty times a reed, and the Princess Mary a host of angels, is that any reason why the law should not have its course? Justice is the God of our lower world, our great omnipresent guardian: as such it moves, or should move on, majestic, awful, irresistible, having no passions—like a God: but, in the very midst of the path across which it is to pass, lo! M. Victor Hugo trips forward, smirking, and says, O divine Justice! I will trouble you to listen to the following trifling effusion of mine:

      ‘Par votre ange envolé, ainsi qu’une,’ etc.

      Awful Justice stops, and, bowing gravely, listens to M. Hugo’s verses, and, with true French politeness, says, ‘Mon cher Monsieur, these verses are charming, ravissants, délicieux, and, coming from such a célébrité littéraire as yourself, shall meet with every possible attention—in fact, had I required anything to confirm my own previous opinions, this charming poem would have done so. Bon jour, mon cher Monsieur Hugo, au revoir!’—and they part:—Justice taking off his hat and bowing, and the Author of Ruy Blas quite convinced that he has been treating with him d’égal à égal. I can hardly bring my mind to fancy that anything is serious in France—it seems to be all rant, tinsel, and stage-play. Sham liberty, sham monarchy, sham glory, sham justice—où, diable, donc la vérité va-t-elle se nicher?

      . … .

      The last rocket of the fête of July has just mounted, exploded, made a portentous bang, and emitted a gorgeous show of blue-lights, and then (like many reputations) disappeared totally: the hundredth gun on the Invalid Terrace has uttered its last roar—and a great comfort it is for eyes and ears that the festival is over. We shall be able to go about our every-day business again, and not be hustled by the gendarmes or the crowd.

      The sight which I have just come away from is as brilliant, happy, and beautiful as can be conceived; and if you want to see French people to the greatest advantage, you should go to a festival like this, where their manners and innocent gaiety show a very pleasing contrast to the coarse and vulgar hilarity which the same class would exhibit in our own country—at Epsom racecourse, for instance, or Greenwich Fair. The greatest noise that I heard was that of a company of jolly villagers from a place in the neighbourhood of Paris, who, as soon as the fireworks were over, formed themselves into a line, three or four abreast, and so marched singing home. As for the fireworks, squibs and crackers are very hard to describe, and very little was to be seen of them: to me, the prettiest sight was the vast, orderly, happy crowd, the number of children, and the extraordinary care and kindness of the parents towards these little creatures. It does one good to see honest, heavy épiciers, fathers of families, playing with them in the Tuileries, or, as to-night, bearing them stoutly on their shoulders, through many long hours, in order that the little ones, too, may have their share of the fun. John Bull, I fear, is more selfish: he does not take Mrs. Bull to the public-house; but leaves her, for the most part, to take care of the children at home.

      The fête, then, is over; the pompous black pyramid at the Louvre is only a skeleton now; all the flags have been miraculously whisked away during the night, and the fine chandeliers which glittered down the Champs Élysées for full half a mile have been consigned to their dens and darkness. Will they ever be reproduced for other celebrations of the glorious 29th of July?—I think not; the Government which vowed that there СКАЧАТЬ