He Has
Lived Ever Since At Lausanne, And Tho' Near Seventy-Four Years Of Age And
Tormented With The Gout, He Never Loses His Cheerfulness, And Passes His
Time Mostly With His Books.
He gives dinner parties two or three times a
week, which are exceedingly pleasant, and one is sure to meet there a
small, but well informed society of natives and foreigners.
Most German
travellers of rank and litterary attainments, who pass thro' Lausanne,
bring letters of introduction and recommendation to the Baron and are sure
to meet with the utmost hospitality and attention.
The women of the Canton de Vaud are in general very handsome, well shaped
and graceful; litterature, music, dancing and drawing are cultivated by
them with success; and among the men, tho' one does not meet perhaps with
quite as much instruction as at Geneva (I mean that it is not so general),
yet no pedantry whatever prevails as in Geneva. At Lausanne they have
sincere and solid republican principles and they do not pay that servile
court to the English that the Genevese do; nor have they as yet adopted the
phrase "Dieu me damne."
PARIS, Dec. 5th.
I returned to Paris by Geneva and crossing the Jura chain of mountains
passed thro' Dole, Auxonne and Dijon. At Geneva, where I stopped three
days, I met, at a musical party given by M. Picot the banker, the
celebrated cantatrice Grassini, who looked as beautiful as ever, and sung
in the most fascinating style several airs, particularly "Quelle pupille
tenere" in the opera of the Orazj e Curiazi. To my taste her style of
singing is far preferable to that of Catalani; there is much more pathos
and feeling in the singing of Grassini; it is completely and truly the
"cantar che nell'anima si sente." Catalani is very powerful, wonderful,
if you will, in execution; but she does not touch my heart as Grassini
does.
On my return to Paris from Geneva I found that the conditions of peace had
been made public. They are certainly hard, not so much on account of the
cession of territory, which is trifling, as on account of the vast sums of
money that Prance is obliged to pay, and the still more galling condition
of having to pay and feed at her expense an army of occupation of 150,000
men, of the Allied troops, for a term of three or five years, and to cede
during that period several important fortresses. The inhabitants of Paris
look very gloomy and nobody seems to think that the peace will last half as
long. Prussia and Austria strove hard to wrest Alsace and German Lorraine
from France; hosts of German publicists had accompanied their armies into
France and had written pamphlet upon pamphlet to prove that mountains and
not rivers were the proper boundaries of nations and that wherever the
German language prevails, the country ought to belong to the Germanic body.
Ergo, the Vosges mountains were the natural boundaries of France, and
Alsace and German Lorraine should revert to Germany. Russia and England,
however, opposed this, and insisted that these two provinces should remain
with France; but I have no doubt that the first movements that may occur in
France (and they will perhaps be secretly encouraged) will serve as a
pretext for the Allies to separate these countries definitively from
France.
The Louvre has been stripped of the principal statues and pictures which
have been sent back to the places from whence they were taken, to the great
mortification of the Parisians, most of whom would have consented to the
cession of Alsace and Lorraine and half of France to boot on condition of
keeping the statues and pictures. The English Bureaux are preparing to
leave Paris and the troops will soon follow; a new French army is
organizing and several Swiss battalions are raised. It is generally
supposed that by the end of December France, with the exception of the
fortresses and districts to be occupied by the Allied Powers, will be freed
from the pressure of foreign troops.
The Chamber of Peers is occupied with the trial of Marshall Ney, the
Conseil de Guerre, which was ordered to assemble for that purpose having
declared itself incompetent. The friends of Ney advised him to claim the
protection of the 12th Article of the Capitulation of Paris, and Madame
Ney, it is said, applied both to the Duke of Wellington and to the Emperor
of Russia; both ungenerously refused; to the former Nature has not given a
heart with much sensibility, and the latter bears a petty spite against Ney
on account of his title, Prince de la Moskowa. It is pretty generally
anticipated that poor Ney will be condemned and executed; for tho' at the
representation of Cinna a few nights ago, at the Theatre Francais, the
allusions to clemency were loudly caught hold of and applauded by the
audience, yet I suspect Louis XVIII is by no means of a relenting nature,
and that he is as little inclined to pardon political trespasses as his
ancestor Louis IX was disposed to pardon those against religion; for,
according to Gibbon, his recommendation to his followers was: "Si
quelqu'un parle contre la foi chretienne dans votre presence, donnez lui
l'epee ventre-dedans."
December 18th.
I met with an emigrant this day at the Palais Royal who was acquainted with
my family in London. It was the Vicomte de B*****ye.[58] He had resided
some time in England and also in Switzerland. He is an amiable man, but a
most incorrigible Ultra. He displayed at once the ideas that prevail among
the Ultras, which must render them eternally at variance with the mass of
the French nation. In speaking of the state of France, he said: "Je n'ai
jamais cesse et jamais je ne cesserai de regarder comme voleurs tous les
acquereurs des biens des emigres. Il faudroit, pour le bonheur de la
France, qu'elle fut places dans le meme etat ou elle etait avant la
Revolution." He would not listen to my reasons against the possibility of
effecting such a plan, even were the plan just and reasonable in itself.
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