I
Gazed Until All Surrounding Objects Disappeared, And I Was Alone Upon
The Wide Atlantic.
Those transparent emerald waves are no fiction;
they leap madly, hungering for their prey.
That distended sail is
filled with the lurid air. That dead man's foot hangs off in the
seething brine a stark reality. What a fixed gaze of despair in that
father's stony eye! What a group of deathly living ones around that
frail mast, while one with intense eagerness flutters a signal to some
far-descried bark! Coleridge's Ancient Mariner has no colors more
fearfully faithful to his theme. Heaven pities them not. Ocean is all
in uproar against them. And there is no voice that can summon the
distant, flying sail! So France appeared to that prophet painter's
eye, in the subsiding tempests of the revolution. So men's hearts
failed them for fear, and the dead lay stark and stiff among the
living, amid the sea and the waves roaring; and so mute signals of
distress were hung out in the lurid sky to nations afar.
For my part, I remain a heretic. Give to these French pictures the
mellowing effects of age, impregnating not merely the picture, but the
eye that gazes on it, with its subtle quality; let them be gazed at
through the haze of two hundred years, and they will - or I cannot see
why they will not - rival the productions of any past age. I do not
believe that a more powerful piece ever was painted than yon raft by
Gericault, nor any more beautiful than several in the Luxembourg; the
"Decadence de Rome," for example, exhibiting the revels of the Romans
during the decline of the empire. Let this Decadence unroll before the
eyes of men the _cause_, that wreck by Gericault symbolize the
_effect_, in the great career of nations, and the two are
sublimely matched.
After visiting the Luxembourg, I resorted to the gardens of the
Tuileries. The thermometer was at about eighty degrees in the shade.
From the number of people assembled one would have thought, if it had
been in the United States, that some great mass convention was coming
off. Under the impenetrable screen of the trees, in the dark, cool,
refreshing shade, are thousands of chairs, for which one pays two
cents apiece. Whole families come, locking up their door, bringing the
baby, work, dinner, or lunch, take a certain number of chairs, and
spend the day. As far as eye can reach you see a multitude seated, as
if in church, with other multitudes moving to and fro, while boys and
girls without number are frolicking, racing, playing ball, driving
hoop, &c., but contriving to do it without making a hideous racket.
How French children are taught to play and enjoy themselves without
disturbing every body else, is a mystery. "_C'est gentil_" seems
to be a talismanic spell; and "_Ce n'est pas gentil ca_" is
sufficient to check every rising irregularity. O that some
_savant_ would write a book and tell us how it is done! I gazed
for half an hour on the spectacle. A more charming sight my eyes never
beheld. There were grayheaded old men, and women, and invalids; and
there were beautiful demoiselles working worsted, embroidery, sewing;
men reading papers; and, in fact, people doing every thing they would
do in their own parlors. And all were graceful, kind, and obliging;
not a word nor an act of impoliteness or indecency. No wonder the
French adore Paris, thought I; in no other city in the world is a
scene like this possible! No wonder that their hearts die within them
at thoughts of exile in the fens of Cayenne!
But under all this there lie, as under the cultivated crust of this
fair world, deep abysses of soul, where volcanic masses of molten lava
surge and shake the tremulous earth. In the gay and bustling
Boulevards, a friend, an old resident of Paris, poised out to me, as
we rode, the bullet marks that scarred the houses - significant tokens
of what seems, but is not, forgotten.
At sunset a military band of about seventy performers began playing in
front of the Tuileries. They formed an immense circle, the leader in
the centre. He played the octave flute, which also served as a baton
for marking time. The music was characterized by delicacy, precision,
suppression, and subjugation of rebellious material.
I imagined a congress of horns, clarinets, trumpets, &c., conversing
in low tones on some important theme; nay, rather a conspiracy of
instruments, mourning between whiles their subjugation, and ever and
anon breaking out in a fierce _emeute_, then repressed, hushed,
dying away; as if they had heard of Baron Munchausen's frozen horn,
and had conceived the idea of yielding their harmonies without touch
of human lips, yet were sighing and sobbing at their impotence.
Perhaps I detected the pulses of a nation's palpitating heart,
throbbing for liberty, but trodden down, and sobbing in despair.
In the evening Mrs. C. had her _salon_, a fashion of receiving
one's friends on a particular night, that one wishes could be
transplanted to American soil.
No invitations are given. It is simply understood that on such an
evening, the season through, a lady _receives_ her friends. All
come that please, without ceremony. A little table is set out with tea
and a plate of cake. Behind it presides some fairy Emma or Elizabeth,
dispensing tea and talk, bonbons and bon-mots, with equal grace. The
guests enter, chat, walk about, spend as much time, or as little, as
they choose, and retire. They come when they please, and go when they
please, and there is no notice taken of entree or exit, no time wasted
in formal greetings and leave takings.
Up to this hour we had conversed little in French. One is naturally
diffident at first; for if one musters courage to commence a
conversation with propriety, the problem is how to escape a Scylla in
the second and a Charybdis in the third sentence.
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