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

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      ‘I had nothing to say, but held my tongue, wondering, not at the change which had taken place in the habits, manners, and opinions of my friend, but at my own folly, which led me to fancy that I should find the student of ’26 in the functionary of ’34. At this moment a domestic appeared.

      ‘ “Madame is waiting for Monsieur,” said he: “the last bell has gone, and mass beginning.”

      ‘ “Mass!” said I, bounding up from my chair. “You at mass, like a decent serious Christian, without crackers in your pocket, and bored keys to whistle through?”—The sous-préfet rose, his countenance was calm, and an indulgent smile played upon his lips, as he said, “My arrondissement is very devout; and not to interfere with the belief of the population is the maxim of every wise politician: I have precise orders from Government on the point, too, and go to eleven-o’clock mass every Sunday.” ’

      There is a great deal of curious matter for speculation in the accounts here so wittily given by M. de Bernard: but, perhaps, it is still more curious to think of what he has not written, and to judge of his characters, not so much by the words in which he describes them, as by the unconscious testimony that the words all together convey. In the first place, our author describes a swindler imitating the manners of a dandy: and many swindlers and dandies be there, doubtless, in London as well as in Paris. But there is about the present swindler, and about Monsieur Dambergeac the student, and Monsieur Dambergeac the sous-préfet, and his friend, a rich store of calm internal debauch, which does not, let us hope and pray, exist in England. Hearken to M. de Gustan, and his smirking whispers about the Duchess of San Severino, who pour son bonheur particulier, etc. etc. Listen to Monsieur Dambergeac’s friend’s remonstrances concerning pauvre Juliette, who grew sick at the smell of a pipe; to his naïve admiration at the fact that the sous-préfet goes to church: and we may set down, as axioms, that religion is so uncommon among the Parisians, as to awaken the surprise of all candid observers; that gallantry is so common as to create no remark, and to be considered as a matter of course. With us, at least, the converse of the proposition prevails: it is the man professing irreligion who would be remarked and reprehended in England; and, if the second-named vice exists, at any rate it adopts the decency of secrecy, and is not made patent and notorious to all the world. A French gentleman thinks no more of proclaiming that he has a mistress than that he has a tailor; and one lives the time of Boccaccio over again, in the thousand and one French novels which depict the state of society in that country.

      For instance, here are before us a few specimens (do not, madam, be alarmed, you can skip the sentence if you like) to be found in as many admirable witty tales, by the before-lauded Monsieur de Bernard. He is more remarkable than any other French author, to our notion, for writing like a gentleman: there is ease, grace, and ton in his style, which, if we judge aright, cannot be discovered in Balzac, or Soulié, or Dumas. We have then—Gerfaut, a novel: a lovely creature is married to a brave, haughty Alsacian nobleman, who allows her to spend her winters at Paris, he remaining on his terres, cultivating, carousing, and hunting the boar. The lovely creature meets the fascinating Gerfaut at Paris; instantly the latter makes love to her; a duel takes place; baron killed; wife throws herself out of window; Gerfaut plunges into dissipation, and so the tale ends.

      Next, La Femme de Quarante Ans, a capital tale, full of exquisite fun and sparkling satire: La femme de quarante ans has a husband and three lovers; all of whom find out their mutual connection one starry night; for the lady of forty is of a romantic poetical turn, and has given her three admirers a star apiece, saying to one and the other, ‘Alphonse, when yon pale orb rises in heaven, think of me;’ ‘Isidore, when that bright planet sparkles in the sky, remember your Caroline,’ etc.

      Un Acte de Vertu, from which we have taken Dambergeac’s history, contains him, the husband—a wife—and a brace of lovers; and a great deal of fun takes place in the manner in which one lover supplants the other. Pretty morals truly!

      If we examine an author who rejoices in the aristocratic name of Le Comte Horace de Viel-Castel, we find, though with infinitely less wit, exactly the same intrigues going on. A noble Count lives in the Faubourg St. Honoré, and has a noble Duchess for a mistress: he introduces her Grace to the Countess, his wife. The Countess, his wife, in order to ramener her lord to his conjugal duties, is counselled, by a friend, to pretend to take a lover: one is found, who, poor fellow! takes the affair in earnest: climax—duel, death, despair, and what not! In the Faubourg St. Germain, another novel by the same writer, which professes to describe the very pink of that society which Napoleon dreaded more than Russia, Prussia, and Austria, there is an old husband, of course; a sentimental young German nobleman, that falls in love with his wife; and the moral of the piece lies in the showing up of the conduct of the lady, who is reprehended—not for deceiving her husband (poor devil!)—but for being a flirt, and taking a second lover, to the utter despair, confusion, and annihilation of the first.

      Why, ye gods, do Frenchmen marry at all? Had Père Enfantin (who, it is said, has shaved his ambrosial beard, and is now a clerk in a banking-house) been allowed to carry out his chaste, just, dignified, social scheme, what a deal of marital discomfort might have been avoided:—would it not be advisable that a great reformer and lawgiver of our own, Mr. Robert Owen, should be presented at the Tuileries, and there propound his scheme for the regeneration of France?

      He might, perhaps, be spared, for our country is not yet sufficiently advanced to give such a philosopher fair-play. In London, as yet, there are no blessed Bureaux de Mariage, where an old bachelor may have a charming young maiden—for his money; or a widow of seventy may buy a gay young fellow of twenty, for a certain number of bank-billets. If mariages de convenance take place here (as they will wherever avarice, and poverty, and desire, and yearning after riches are to be found), at least, thank God, such unions are not arranged upon a regular organised system: there is a fiction of attachment with us, and there is a consolation in the deceit (‘the homage,’ according to the old môt of Rochefoucauld, ‘which vice pays to virtue’); for the very falsehood shows that the virtue exists somewhere. We once heard a furious old French colonel inveighing against the chastity of English demoiselles: ‘Figurez-vous, sir,’ said he (he had been a prisoner in England), ‘that these women come down to dinner in low dresses, and walk out alone with the men!’—and, pray Heaven, so may they walk, fancy-free in all sorts of maiden meditations, and suffer no more molestation than that young lady of whom Moore sings, and who (there must have been a famous lord-lieutenant in those days) walked through all Ireland, with rich and rare gems, beauty, and a gold ring on her stick, without meeting or thinking of harm.

      Now, whether Monsieur de Viel-Castel has given a true picture of the Faubourg St. Germain, it is impossible for most foreigners to say; but some of his descriptions will not fail to astonish the English reader; and all are filled with that remarkable naïf contempt of the institution called marriage, which we have seen in M. de Bernard. The romantic young nobleman of Westphalia arrives at Paris, and is admitted into what a celebrated female author calls la crême de la crême de la haute volée of Parisian society. He is a youth of about twenty years of age. ‘No passion had as yet come to move his heart, and give life to his faculties; he was awaiting and fearing the moment of love; calling for it, and yet trembling at its approach; feeling, in the depths of his soul, that that moment would create a mighty change in his being, and decide, perhaps, by its influence, the whole of his future life.’

      Is it not remarkable that a young nobleman, with these ideas, should not pitch upon a demoiselle, or a widow, at least? but no, the rogue must have a married woman, bad luck to him; and what his fate is to be is thus recounted by our author, in the shape of

      A FRENCH FASHIONABLE CONVERSATION

      ‘A lady, with a great deal of esprit, to whom forty years’ experience of the great world had given СКАЧАТЬ