Then, Late In The Afternoon We Drove Away, About Three Miles, To
The Villa Of M. Belloc, _Directeur De L'Ecole Imperials De
Dessein_.
Madame Belloc has produced, assisted by her friend,
Mademoiselle Montgolfier, the best French translation of Uncle Tom's
Cabin.
At this little family party we enjoyed ourselves exceedingly,
in the heart of genuine domestic life. Two beautiful married daughters
were there, with their husbands, and the household seemed complete.
Madame B. speaks English well; and thus, with our limited French, we
got on delightfully together. I soon discovered that I had been
sinning against all law in admiring any thing at Versailles. They were
all bad paintings. There might be one or two good paintings at the
Luxembourg, and one or two good modern paintings at the Louvre - the
Meduse, by Gericault, for example: (How I rejoiced that I had admired
it!) But all the rest of the modern paintings M. Belloc declared, with
an inimitable shrug, are poor paintings. There is nothing safely
admirable, I find, but the old masters. All those battles of all
famous French generals, from Charles Hartel to Napoleon, and the
battles in Algiers, by Horace Yernet, are wholly to be snuffed at. In
painting, as in theology, age is the criterion of merit. Yet Vernet's
paintings, though decried by M. le Directeur, I admired, and told him
so. Said I, in French as lawless as the sentiment, "Monsieur, I do not
know the rules of painting, nor whether the picture is according to
them or not; I only know that I like it."
But who shall describe the social charms of our dinner? All wedged
together, as we were, in the snuggest little pigeon hole of a dining
room, pretty little chattering children and all, whom papa held upon
his knee and fed with bonbons, all the while impressing upon them the
absolute necessity of their leaving the table! There the salad was
mixed by acclamation, each member of the party adding a word of
advice, and each, gayly laughing at the advice of the other. There a
gay, red lobster was pulled in pieces among us, with infinite gout;
and Madame Belloc pathetically expressed her fears that we did not
like French cooking. She might have saved herself the trouble; for we
take to it as naturally as ducks take to the water. And then, when we
returned to the parlor, we resolved ourselves into a committee of the
whole on coffee, which was concocted in a trim little hydrostatic
engine of latest modern invention, before the faces of all. And so we
right merrily spent the evening. H. discussed poetry and art with our
kind hosts to her heart's content, and at a late hour we drove to the
railroad, and returned to Paris.
LETTER XXXI.
MY DEAR L.: -
At last I have come into dreamland; into the lotus-eater's paradise;
into the land where it is always afternoon. I am released from care; I
am unknown, unknowing; I live in a house whose arrangements seem to me
strange, old, and dreamy.
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