I amused myself till dark, watching the streams that poured into the broad mouth of the postillion's boots from every part of his dress, and musing on the fate of the poor Maid of Orleans; and then, sinking down into the comfortable corner of the _coupe_, I slept almost without interruption till the next morning--the best comment in the world on the only _comfortable_ thing I have yet seen in France, a diligence.

It is a pleasant thing in a foreign land to see the familiar face of the sun; and, as he rose over a distant hill on the left, I lifted the window of the _coupe_ to let him in, as I would open the door to a long-missed friend. He soon reached a heavy cloud, however, and my hopes of bright weather, when we should enter the metropolis, departed. It began to rain again; and the postilion, after his blue cotton frock was soaked through, put on his greatcoat over it--an economy which is peculiarly French, and which I observed in every succeeding postilion on the route. The last twenty-five miles to Paris are uninteresting to the eye; and with my own pleasant thoughts, tinct as they were with the brightness of immediate antic.i.p.ation, and an occasional laugh at the grotesque figures and equipages on the road, I made myself pa.s.sably contented till I entered the suburb of St. Denis.

It is something to see the outside of a sepulchre for kings, and the old abbey of St. Denis needs no a.s.sociation to make a sight of it worth many a mile of weary travel. I could not stop within four miles of Paris, however, and I contented myself with running to get a second view of it in the rain while the postilion breathed his horses. The strongest a.s.sociation about it, old and magnificent as it is, is the fact that Napoleon repaired it after the revolution; and standing in probably the finest point for its front view, my heart leaped to my throat as I fancied that Napoleon, with his mighty thoughts, had stood in that very spot, possibly, and contemplated the glorious old pile before me as the place of his future repose.

After four miles more, over a broad straight avenue, paved in the centre and edged with trees, we arrived at the port of St. Denis. I was exceedingly struck with the grandeur of the gate as we pa.s.sed under, and, referring to the guide-book, I find it was a triumphal arch erected to Louis XIV., and the one by which the kings of France invariably enter. This also was restored by Napoleon, with his infallible taste, without changing its design: and it is singular how everything that great man touched became his own--for, who remembers for whom it was raised while he is told who employed his great intellect in its repairs?

I entered Paris on Sunday at eleven o'clock. I never should have recognized the day. The shops were all open, the artificers all at work, the unintelligible criers vociferating their wares, and the people in their working-day dresses. We wound through street after street, narrow and dark and dirty, and with my mind full of the splendid views of squares, and columns, and bridges, as I had seen them in the prints, I could scarce believe I was in Paris. A turn brought us into a large court, that of the Messagerie, the place at which all travellers are set down on arrival. Here my baggage was once more inspected, and, after a half-hour's delay, I was permitted to get into a _fiacre_, and drive to a hotel. As one is a specimen of all, I may as well describe the _Hotel d'Etrangers_, Rue Vivienne, which, by the way, I take the liberty at the same time to recommend to my friends. It is the precise centre for the convenience of sight-seeing, admirably kept, and, being nearly opposite Galignani's, that bookstore of Europe, is a very pleasant resort for the half hour before dinner, or a rainy day. I went there at the instance of my friend the _diplomat_.

The _fiacre_ stopped before an arched pa.s.sage, and a fellow in livery, who had followed me from the Messagerie (probably in the double character of porter and police agent, as my pa.s.sport was yet to be demanded), took my trunk into a small office on the left, over which was written "_Concierge_." This person, who is a kind of respectable doorkeeper, addressed me in broken English, without waiting for the evidence of my tongue, that I was a foreigner, and, after inquiring at what price I would have a room, introduced me to the landlady, who took me across a large court (the houses are built _round_ the yard always in France), to the corresponding story of the house. The room was quite pretty, with its looking-gla.s.ses and curtains, but there was no carpet, and the fireplace was ten feet deep. I asked to see another, and another, and another; they were all curtains and looking-gla.s.ses, and stone-floors! There is no wearying a French woman, and I pushed my modesty till I found a chamber to my taste--a nutsh.e.l.l, to be sure, but carpeted--and bowing my polite housekeeper out, I rang for breakfast and was at home in Paris.

There are few things bought with money that are more delightful than a French breakfast. If you take it at your room, it appears in the shape of two small vessels, one of coffee and one of hot milk, two kinds of bread, with a thin, printed slice of b.u.t.ter, and one or two of some thirty dishes from which you choose, the latter flavored exquisitely enough to make one wish to be always at breakfast, but cooked and composed I know not how or of what. The coffee has an aroma peculiarly exquisite, something quite different from any I ever tasted before; and the _pet.i.t-pain_, a slender biscuit between bread and cake, is, when crisp and warm, a delightful accompaniment. All this costs about one third as much as the beefsteaks and coffee in America, and at the same time that you are waited upon with a civility that is worth three times the money.

It still rained at noon, and, finding that the usual dinner hour was five, I took my umbrella for a walk. In a strange city I prefer always to stroll about at hazard, coming unawares upon what is fine or curious. The hackneyed descriptions in the guidebooks profane the spirit of a place; I never look at them till after I have found the object, and then only for dates. The Rue Vivienne was crowded with people, as I emerged from the dark archway of the hotel to pursue my wanderings.

A walk of this kind, by the way, shows one a great deal of novelty. In France there are no shop-_men_. No matter what is the article of trade--hats, boots, pictures, books, jewellery, anything or everything that gentlemen buy--you are waited upon by girls, always handsome, and always dressed in the height of the mode. They sit on damask-covered settees, behind the counters; and, when you enter, bow and rise to serve you, with a grace and a smile of courtesy that would become a drawing-room. And this is universal.

I strolled on until I entered a narrow pa.s.sage, penetrating a long line of buildings. It was thronged with people, and pa.s.sing in with the rest, I found myself unexpectedly in a scene that equally surprised and delighted me. It was a s.p.a.cious square enclosed by one entire building. The area was laid out as a garden, planted with long avenues of trees and beds of flowers, and in the centre a fountain was playing in the shape of a _fleur-de-lis_, with a jet about forty feet in height. A superb colonnade ran round the whole square, making a covered gallery of the lower story, which was occupied by shops of the most splendid appearance, and thronged through its long sheltered _paves_ by thousands of gay promenaders. It was the far-famed _Palais Royal_. I remembered the description I had heard of its gambling houses, and facilities for every vice, and looked with a new surprise on its Aladdin-like magnificence. The hundreds of beautiful pillars, stretching away from the eye in long and distant perspective, the crowd of citizens, and women, and officers in full uniform, pa.s.sing and re-pa.s.sing with French liveliness and politeness, the long windows of plated gla.s.s glittering with jewellery, and bright with everything to tempt the fancy, the tall sentinels pacing between the columns, and the fountain turning over its clear waters with a fall audible above the tread and voices of the thousands who walked around it--who could look upon such a scene and believe it what it is, the most corrupt spot, probably, on the face of the civilized world?

LETTER V.

THE LOUVRE--AMERICANS IN PARIS--POLITICS, ETC.

The salient object in my idea of Paris has always been the Louvre. I have spent some hours in its vast gallery to-day and I am sure it will retain the same prominence in my recollections. The whole palace is one of the oldest, and said to be one of the finest, in Europe; and, if I may judge from its impressiveness, the vast inner court (the _facades_ of which were restored to their original simplicity by Napoleon), is a specimen of high architectural perfection. One could hardly pa.s.s through it without being better fitted to see the masterpieces of art within; and it requires this, and all the expansiveness of which the mind is capable besides, to walk through the _Musee Royale_ without the painful sense of a magnificence beyond the grasp of the faculties.

I delivered my pa.s.sport at the door of the palace, and, as is customary, recorded my name, country, and profession in the book, and proceeded to the gallery. The grand double staircase, one part leading to the private apartments of the royal household, is described voluminously in the authorities; and, truly, for one who has been accustomed to convenient dimensions only, its breadth, its lofty ceilings, its pillars and statuary, its mosaic pavements and splendid windows, are enough to unsettle for ever the standards of size and grandeur. The strongest feeling one has, as he stops half way up to look about him, is the ludicrous disproportion between it and the size of the inhabiting animals. I should smile to see any man ascend such a staircase, except, perhaps, Napoleon.

Pa.s.sing through a kind of entrance-hall, I came to a s.p.a.cious _salle ronde_, lighted from the ceiling, and hung princ.i.p.ally with pictures of a large size, one of the most conspicuous of which, "The Wreck,"

has been copied by an American artist, Mr. Cooke, and is now exhibiting in New York. It is one of the best of the French school, and very powerfully conceived. I regret, however, that he did not prefer the wonderfully fine piece opposite, which is worth all the pictures ever painted in France, "The Marriage Supper at Cana." The left wing of the table, projected toward the spectator, with seven or eight guests who occupy it, absolutely stands out into the hall. It seems impossible that color and drawing upon a flat surface can so cheat the eye.

From the _salle ronde_, on the right opens the grand gallery, which, after the lesson I had just received in perspective, I took, at the first glance, to be a painting. You will realize the facility of the deception when you consider, that, with a breadth of but forty-two feet, this gallery is one thousand three hundred and thirty-two feet (more than a quarter of a mile) in length. The floor is of tesselated woods, polished with wax like a table; and along its gla.s.sy surface were scattered perhaps a hundred visiters, gazing at the pictures in varied att.i.tudes, and with sizes reduced in proportion to their distance, the farthest off looking, in the long perspective, like pigmies of the most diminutive description. It is like a matchless painting to the eye, after all. The ceiling is divided by nine or ten arches, standing each on four Corinthian columns, projecting into the area; and the natural perspective of these, and the artists scattered from one end to the other, copying silently at their easels, and a soldier at every division, standing upon his guard, quite as silent and motionless, would make it difficult to convince a spectator, who was led blindfold and unprepared to the entrance, that it was not some superb diorama, figures and all.

I found our distinguished countryman, Morse, copying a beautiful Murillo at the end of the gallery. He is also engaged upon a Raffaelle for Cooper, the novelist. Among the French artists, I noticed several soldiers, and some twenty or thirty females, the latter with every mark in their countenances of absorbed and extreme application. There was a striking difference in this respect between them and the artists of the other s.e.x. With the single exception of a lovely girl, drawing from a Madonna, by Guido, and protected by the presence of an elderly companion, these lady painters were anything but interesting in their appearance.

Greenough, the sculptor, is in Paris, and engaged just now in taking the bust of an Italian lady. His reputation is now very enviable; and his pa.s.sion for his art, together with his untiring industry and his fine natural powers, will work him up to something that will, before long, be an honor to our country. If the wealthy men of taste in America would give Greenough liberal orders for his time and talents, and send out Augur, of New Haven, to Italy, they would do more to advance this glorious art in our country, than by expending ten times the sum in any other way. They are both men of rare genius, and both ardent and diligent, and they are both cramped by the universal curse of genius--necessity. The Americans in Paris are deliberating at present on some means for expressing unitedly to our government their interest in Greenough, and their appreciation of his merit of public and private patronage. For the love of true taste, do everything in your power to second such an appeal when it comes.

It is a queer feeling to find oneself a _foreigner_. One cannot realize, long at a time, how his face or his manners should have become peculiar; and, after looking at a print for five minutes in a shop window, or dipping into an English book, or in any manner throwing off the mental habit of the instant, the curious gaze of the pa.s.ser by, or the accent of a strange language, strikes one very singularly. Paris is full of foreigners of all nations, and of course, physiognomies of all characters may be met everywhere, but, differing as the European nations do decidedly from each other, they differ still more from the American. Our countrymen, as a cla.s.s, are distinguishable wherever they are met; not as Americans however, for, of the habits and manners of our country, people know nothing this side the water. But there is something in an American face, of which I never was aware till I met them in Europe, that is altogether peculiar. The French take the Americans to be English: but an Englishman, while he presumes him his countryman, shows a curiosity to know who he is, which is very foreign to his usual indifference. As far as I can a.n.a.lyze it, it is the independent self-possessed bearing of a man unused to look up to any one as his superior in rank, united to the inquisitive, sensitive, communicative expression which is the index to our national character. The first is seldom possessed in England but by a man of decided rank, and the latter is never possessed by an Englishman at all. The two are united in no other nation. Nothing is easier than to tell the rank of an Englishman, and nothing puzzles a European more than to know how to rate the pretensions of an American.

On my way home from the Boulevards this evening, I was fortunate enough to pa.s.s through the grand court of the Louvre, at the moment when the moon broke through the clouds that have concealed her own light and the sun's ever since I have been in France. I had often stopped, in pa.s.sing the sentinels at the entrance, to admire the grandeur of the interior to this oldest of the royal palaces; but to-night, my dead halt within the shadow of the arch, as the view broke upon my eye, and my sudden exclamation in English, startled the grenadier, and he had half presented his musket, when I apologized and pa.s.sed on. It was magically beautiful indeed! and, with the moonlight pouring obliquely into the sombre area, lying full upon the taller of the three _facades_, and drawing its soft line across the rich windows and ma.s.sive pilasters and arches of the eastern and western, while the remaining front lay in the heavy black shadow of relief, it seemed to me more like an accidental regularity in some rocky glen of America, than a pile of human design and proportion. It is strange how such high walls shut out the world. The court of the Louvre is in the very centre of the busiest quarter of Paris, thousands of persons pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing constantly at the extremity of the long arched entrances, and yet, standing on the pavement of that lonely court, no living creature in sight but the motionless grenadiers at either gate, the noises without coming to your ear in a subdued murmur, like the wind on the sea, and nothing visible above but the sky, resting like a ceiling on the lofty walls, the impression of utter solitude is irresistible. I pa.s.sed out by the archway for which Napoleon constructed his bronze gates, said to be the most magnificent of modern times, and which are now lying in some obscure corner unused, no succeeding power having had the spirit or the will to complete, even by the slight labor that remained, his imperial design. All over Paris you may see similar instances; they meet you at every step: glorious plans defeated; works, that with a mere moiety of what has been already expended in their progress, might be finished with an effect that none but a mind like Napoleon's could have originally projected.

Paris, of course, is rife with politics. There is but one opinion on the subject of another pending revolution. The "people's king" is about as unpopular as he need be for the purposes of his enemies; and he has aggravated the feeling against him very unnecessarily by his late project in the Tuileries. The whole thing is very characteristic of the French people. He might have deprived them of half their civil rights without immediate resistance; but to cut off a strip of the public garden to make a play ground for his children--to encroach a hundred feet on the pride of Paris, the daily promenade of the idlers, who do all the discussion of his measures, it was a little too venturesome. Unfortunately, too, the offence is in the very eye of curiosity, and the workmen are surrounded, from morning till night, by thousands of people, of all cla.s.ses, gesticulating, and looking at the palace windows and winding themselves gradually up to the revolutionary pitch.

In the event of an explosion, the liberal party will not want partizans, for France is crowded with refugees from tyranny, of every nation. The Poles are flocking hither every day, and the streets are full of their melancholy faces! Poor fellows! they suffer dreadfully from want. The public charity for refugees has been wrung dry long ago, and the most heroic hearts of Poland, after having lost everything but life, in their unavailing struggle, are starving absolutely in the streets. Accident has thrown me into the confidence of a well-known liberal--one of those men of whom the proud may ask a.s.sistance without humiliation, and circ.u.mstances have thus come to my knowledge, which would move a heart of stone. The fict.i.tious sufferings of "Thaddeus of Warsaw," are transcended in real-life misery every day, and by natures quite as n.o.ble. Lafayette, I am credibly a.s.sured, has antic.i.p.ated several years of his income in relieving them; and no possible charity could be so well bestowed as contributions for the Poles, starving in these heartless cities.

I have just heard that Chodsko, a Pole, of distinguished talent and learning, who threw his whole fortune and energy into the late attempted revolution, was arrested here last night, with eight others of his countrymen, under suspicion by the government. The late serious insurrection at Lyons has alarmed the king, and the police is exceedingly strict. The Spanish and Italian refugees, who receive pensions from France, have been ordered off to the provincial towns, by the minister of the interior, and there is every indication of extreme and apprehensive caution. The papers, meantime, are raving against the ministry in the most violent terms, and the king is abused without qualification, everywhere.

I went, a night or two since, to one of the minor theatres to see the representation of a play, which has been performed for the _hundred and second time_!--"Napoleon at Schoenbrun and St. Helena." My object was to study the feelings of the people toward Napoleon II., as the exile's love for his son is one of the leading features of the piece.

It was beautifully played--most beautifully! and I never saw more enthusiasm manifested by an audience. Every allusion of Napoleon to his child, was received with that undertoned, gutteral acclamation, that expresses such deep feeling in a crowd; and the piece is so written that its natural pathos alone is irresistible. No one could doubt for an instant, it seems to me, that the entrance of young Napoleon into France, at any critical moment, would be universally and completely triumphant. The great cry at Lyons was "_Vive Napoleon II.!_"

I have altered my arrangements a little, in consequence of the state of feeling here. My design was to go to Italy immediately, but affairs promise such an interesting and early change, that I shall pa.s.s the winter in Paris.

LETTER VI.

TAGLIONI--FRENCH STAGE, ETC.

I went last night to the French opera, to see the first dancer of the world. The prodigious enthusiasm about her, all over Europe, had, of course, raised my expectations to the highest possible pitch. "_Have you seen Taglioni?_" is the first question addressed to a stranger in Paris; and you hear her name constantly over all the hum of the _cafes_ and in the crowded resorts of fashion. The house was overflowed. The king and his numerous family were present; and my companion pointed out to me many of the n.o.bility, whose names and t.i.tles have been made familiar to our ears by the innumerable private memoirs and autobiographies of the day. After a little introductory piece, the king arrived, and, as soon as the cheering was over, the curtain drew up for "_Le Dieu et la Bayadere_." This is the piece in which Taglioni is most famous. She takes the part of a dancing girl, of whom the Bramah and an Indian prince are both enamored; the former in the disguise of a man of low rank at the court of the latter, in search of some one whose love for him shall be disinterested. The disguised G.o.d succeeds in winning her affection, and, after testing her devotion by submitting for a while to the resentment of his rival, and by a pretended caprice in favor of a singing girl, who accompanies her, he marries her, and then saves her from the flames as she is about to be burned for marrying beneath her _caste_. Taglioni's part is all pantomime. She does not speak during the play, but her motion is more than articulate. Her first appearance was in a troop of Indian dancing girls, who performed before the prince in the public square.

At a signal from the vizier a side pavilion opened, and thirty or forty bayaderes glided out together, and commenced an intricate dance.

They were received with a tremendous round of applause from the audience; but, with the exception of a little more elegance in the four who led the dance, they were dressed nearly alike; and as I saw no particularly conspicuous figure, I presumed that Taglioni had not yet appeared. The splendor of the spectacle bewildered me for the first moment or two, but I presently found my eyes rivetted to a childish creature floating about among the rest, and, taking her for some beautiful young _eleve_ making her first essays in the chorus, I interpreted her extraordinary fascination as a triumph of nature over my unsophisticated taste; and wondered to myself whether, after all, I should be half so much captivated with the show of skill I expected presently to witness. _This was Taglioni!_ She came forward directly, in a _pas seul_, and I then observed that her dress was distinguished from that of her companions by its extreme modesty both of fashion and ornament, and the unconstrained ease with which it adapted itself to her shape and motion. She looks not more than fifteen. Her figure is small, but rounded to the very last degree of perfection; not a muscle swelled beyond the exquisite outline; not an angle, not a fault. Her back and neck, those points so rarely beautiful in woman, are faultlessly formed; her feet and hands are in full proportion to her size, and the former play as freely and with as natural a yieldingness in her fairy slippers, as if they were accustomed only to the dainty uses of a drawing-room. Her face is most strangely interesting; not quite beautiful, but of that half-appealing, half-retiring sweetness that you sometimes see blended with the secluded reserve and unconscious refinement of a young girl just "out" in a circle of high fashion. In her greatest exertions her features retain the same timid half smile, and she returns to the alternate by-play of her part without the slightest change of color, or the slightest perceptible difference in her breathing, or in the ease of her look and posture.

No language can describe her motion. She swims in your eye like a curl of smoke, or a flake of down. Her difficulty seems to be to keep to the floor. You have the feeling while you gaze upon her, that, if she were to rise and float away like Ariel, you would scarce be surprised.

And yet all is done with such a childish unconsciousness of admiration, such a total absence of exertion or fatigue, that the delight with which she fills you is unmingled; and, a.s.sured as you are by the perfect purity of every look and att.i.tude, that her hitherto spotless reputation is deserved beyond a breath of suspicion, you leave her with as much respect as admiration; and find with surprise that a dancing girl, who is exposed night after night to the profaning gaze of the world, has crept into one of the most sacred niches of your memory.

I have attended several of the best theatres in Paris, and find one striking trait in all their first actors--_nature_. They do not look like actors, and their playing is not like acting. They are men, generally, of the most earnest, unstudied simplicity of countenance; and when they come upon the stage, it is singularly without affectation, and as the character they represent would appear. Unlike most of the actors I have seen, too, they seem altogether unaware of the presence of the audience. Nothing disturbs the fixed attention they give to each other in the dialogue, and no private interview between simple and sincere men could be more unconscious and natural.

I have formed consequently a high opinion of the French drama, degenerate as it is said to be since the loss of Talma; and it is easy to see that the root of its excellence is in the taste and judgment of the people. _They applaud judiciously._ When Taglioni danced her wonderful _pas seul_, for instance, the applause was general and sufficient. It was a triumph of art, and she was applauded as an artist. But when, as the neglected bayadere, she stole from the corner of the cottage, and, with her indescribable grace, hovered about the couch of the disguised Bramah, watching and fanning him while he slept, she expressed so powerfully, by the saddened tenderness of her manner, the devotion of a love that even neglect could not estrange, that a murmur of delight ran through the whole house; and, when her silent pantomime was interrupted by the waking of the G.o.d, there was an overwhelming tumult of acclamation that came from the _hearts_ of the audience, and as such must have been both a lesson, and the highest compliment, to Taglioni. An actor's taste is of course very much regulated by that of his audience. He will cultivate that for which he is most praised. We shall never have a high-toned drama in America, while, as at present, applause is won only by physical exertion, and the nice touches of genius and nature pa.s.s undetected and unfelt.

Of the French actresses, I have been most pleased with Leontine Fay.

She is not much talked of here, and perhaps, as a mere artist in her profession, is inferior to those who are more popular; but she has that indescribable something in her face that has interested me through life--that strange talisman which is linked wisely to every heart, confining its interest to some nice difference invisible to other eyes, and, by a happy consequence, undisputed by other admiration. She, too, has that retired sweetness of look that seems to come only from secluded habits, and in the highly-wrought pa.s.sages of tragedy, when her fine dark eyes are filled with tears, and her tones, which have never the out-of-doors key of the stage, are clouded and imperfect, she seems less an actress than a refined and lovely woman, breaking through the habitual reserve of society in some agonizing crisis of real life. There are prints of Leontine Fay in the shops, and I have seen them in America, but they resemble her very little.

LETTER VII.

JOACHIM LELEWEL--PALAIS ROYAL--PERE LA CHAISE--VERSAILLES, ETC.

I met, at a breakfast party, to-day, Joachim Lelewel, the celebrated scholar and patriot of Poland. Having fallen in with a great deal of revolutionary and emigrant society since I have been in Paris, I have often heard his name, and looked forward to meeting him with high pleasure and curiosity. His writings are pa.s.sionately admired by his countrymen. He was the princ.i.p.al of the university, idolized by that effective part of the population, the students of Poland; and the fearless and lofty tone of his patriotic principles is said to have given the first and strongest momentum to the ill-fated struggle just over. Lelewel impressed me very strongly. Unlike most of the Poles, who are erect, athletic, and florid, he is thin, bent, and pale; and were it not for the fire and decision of his eye, his uncertain gait and sensitive address would convey an expression almost of timidity.

His form, features, and manners, are very like those of Percival, the American poet, though their countenances are marked with the respective difference of their habits of mind. Lelewel looks like a naturally modest, shrinking man, worked up to the calm resolution of a martyr. The strong stamp of his face is devoted enthusiasm. His eye is excessively bright, but quiet and habitually downcast; his lips are set firmly, but without effort, together; and his voice is almost sepulchral, it is so low and calm. He never breaks through his melancholy, though his refugee countrymen, except when Poland is alluded to, have all the vivacity of French manners, and seem easily to forget their misfortunes. He was silent, except when particularly addressed, and had the air of a man who thought himself un.o.bserved, and had shrunk into his own mind. I felt that he was winning upon my heart every moment. I never saw a man in my life whose whole air and character were so free from self-consciousness or pretension--never one who looked to me so capable of the calm, lofty, unconquerable heroism of a martyr.

"Paris is the centre of the world," if centripetal tendency is any proof of it. Everything struck off from the other parts of the universe flies straight to the _Palais Royal_. You may meet in its thronged galleries, in the course of an hour, representatives of every creed, rank, nation, and system, under heaven. Hussein Pacha and Don Pedro pace daily the same _pave_--the one brooding on a kingdom lost, the other on the throne he hopes to win; the Polish general and the proscribed Spaniard, the exiled Italian conspirator, the contemptuous Turk, the well-dressed negro from Hayti, and the silk-robed Persian, revolve by the hour together around the same _jet d'eau_, and costumes of every cut and order, mustaches and beards of every degree of ferocity and oddity, press so fast and thick upon the eye that one forgets to be astonished. There are no such things as "lions" in Paris. The extraordinary persons outnumber the ordinary. Every other man you meet would keep a small town in a ferment for a month.