A GLIMPSE AT PARIS IN NOVEMBER.
[FROM AN OCCASIONAL CORRESPONDENT.]
WHAT a lovely day was Monday, the 16th, in Paris ! At 4 p.m., the sun was so hot that one really moved away from its rays ; overcoats were impossible. The whole population seemed out in the streets, and remained so till very late in the night, and I con- fess I never knew "Saint Monday" to parade so many drunken worshippers abroad. But it cannot, I fear, be denied that not drunkenness alone, but most other forms of vice, are greatly on the increase amongst the working population of Paris. That im- morality which was universal in the upper ranks of French society in the last century, which spread through the middle ranks during the first half of this, seems now becoming rampant among the work- ing class. In many of the Paris trades which have to be recruited from the country population, it used to be a point of honour with the workman, as soon as he had made a little money, to go home and marry a payse. It is admitted on all sides now that an ever- increasing number of such now come up to the capital, never to return, and never to marry. I need say no more.
And yet one cannot help observing the effects of a directly opposite tendency to this in the enormous growth of houses in the neighbourhood of Paris. This poor artificial Paris, which hardly knows what the country really is, is clearly athirst for the country. I was amazed at the amount of traffic to the intermediate stations on one of the Versailles lines, and at the omnibus traffic again from several of these. Yet the railway company actually gives no en- couragement to return tickets (the price being simply double that of a single ticket), and to season-tickets so little that it is said not to be worth while taking them, unless one has to go to Paris every day, including Sundays. Still, dapper-looking brick houses are springing up on all sides. Brick ; seldom stone. Whole fortunes are now being made out of the clay bottoms of old exhausted stone- pits, worth nothing before. A regular ring of brick is thus rapidly forming round the stone nucleus of old Paris, and even in Paris streets brick houses are beginning to be far from rare.
And what of polities? Well, between the channel and the capital, in second-class railway carriages full of Frenchmen, I 'heard not one word of politics spoken ; only talk of sporting (in- cluding Sauces for wolves, now beginning), business, agriculture, and speculation. In Paris, however, and the immediate neighbour- hood, it was otherwise. There is evidently far less restraint than formerly. In the streets, in railway carriages, men talk politics together now without looking to see whether there be a moue,hard at heel or elbow. I should say that the bitter savage hatred
towards the Emperor has a good deal subsided since people have ceased to be afraid of him. There is now more of a sort of curious examination of him, as a phenomenon to be accounted for and to be counted with. There is a growing feeling that, despot as he may be, he is a despot coercible by public opinion, who will rule it if he can, but yield to it if he cannot.
He has taken immense pains to secure publicity to his last speech.
It hangs pasted on the outside of every public building. I tipnot say that I saw any one reading it. I did see the "Vodkas " in many instances torn and defaced. Still, it is adimitted that it has produced its intended effect, in drawing
the teeth of the Opposition in the Chamber. It may mean war in the spring for Poland, and some of his worst enemies will bear a good deal for that. Or it may mean peace with all ; and others will for- give him a great deal for that. In short, he has achieved the difficult success of disarming all opponents for the nonce by a trick of words which yet is seen through by all. It is admitted that the speech amounts simply to an experiment on public opinion ; that, if it be strong enough to compel him to go to war for Poland, he will go to war; that, if it be not so, he will, as he would prefer to do, remain at peace with Russia, and throw the blame on others of the consequences. And some of the most ardent partizans of the Polish cause admit that they find the public feeling far less ener- getic on the subject than they had hoped. I am strongly inclined to think that, out of Paris and the great towns, and apart from centres of high Romanist feeling, the mass of the French nation does not care one jot for a Polish war. And yet it is playing with edge-tools to leave the Polish question fermenting through the winter. If Poland should at last succumb in starvation and agony during the forthcoming season, the consequences may be very serious to the French ruler. Russia is far, but he is near, and the same public feeling which may not have been strong enough to force him into war for Poland whilst she was alive, may assume terrific power towards him and his when she is dead. As to the proposed Congress, people talk and speculate about it ; I fell in with no one who professed to expect from it any immediate practical result whatsoever. Still, as a move on the political chess-board, it is cowidered a clever one.
I heard, on perfectly reliable authority, a curious anecdote of the way in which the Emperor gels up his own Opposition. All the world remembers the famous speech of Prince Napoleon on the Roman question, which established his claim to rank among the foremost orators of the day in France. Many at the time could hardly repress a suspicion that, revolutionary as it seemed to be, it was done to order. The following is the history of it. The Emperor, speaking one day with his Foreign Minister, observed to him that there was one side of the Roman question that had not been sufficiently brought out, that of the part played by diplomacy towards endeavouring to procure internal re-
forms in the Pontifical States, and otherwise to reach a solution through Rome herself, and asked to have some- thing drawn up for him accordingly. The Minister gave
the order to a competent and confidential writer, and soon after forwarded to the Emperor a careful précis of past diplomatic action upon the Court of Rome. A few days after he was told by his master that he had received and read the memoir. But weeks elapsed, and the author, who knew the destination of his manuscript, became anxious to know something more of its fate. The Minister spoke again on the subject to the Emperor, who said that there were some good things in the paper, and that be wished to keep it by him. Some time more elapsed, and behold on opening one day his Moniteur, the writer found his précis nearly at full length in the speech of Prince Napoleon. Nor is this the only instance, I am told, in which this strange despot has,—shall I say amused himself ?—in getting the pros and cons of political questions debated thus in public by secretly appointed advocates. All is not, however, always unreal in the play, and perhaps a Minister, warned by his master that the Imperial policy was about to change, and that he himself must fall, has received at the same time gracious leave to defend himself as best he might. The conduct of the Opposition during the present session is generally considered as having been hitherto very poor, and Emile 011ivier, in particular, is deemed by many a regular sell for the Liberal party. Thiers' re-appearance in debate is not thought to have been a successful one.
The Emperor, through old Marshal Vaillant, has just braved the rage of all the scientific men of France by a coup d'Itat in the Ecole des Beaux Arts, till now under the direction of the Institute, and now entirely taken away from under it. It is said, indeed, that the revolutionary decree on the subject which appeared in the papers of Monday was quite deserved, as all solicitations to reform had been utterly ignored by the self-recruited savans. They will never forgive the Emperor at heart, all the less so that they are in the wrong. But, perhaps, he will find a counterpoise in the affec- tions of the coachmen, who, under the Second Empire, have re- ceived a privilege which should be a seventh heaven to Cabby— that of measuring distance by time,—so much for a course of less than fifteen minutes, so much if it exceeds that time. By the way, I remember hearing years ago that Prince Louis, the present Emperor, enjoyed a quite exceptional popularity amongst the Lon- don cabmen, from always paying without a word whatever they asked of him. One other fact of considerable importance must be noted. The wearisome everlasting demolition of Paris, old and new, has at last become so distasteful to many that, I was assured, several thousands of Ministerialists cast at the last elections their votes in favour of the Opposition candidates, in the hope that a strong Opposition might put a stop to the process. Whole rows of houses, in particular, have been commercially ruined by the levelling; of streets (invariably, I should say, for strate- gical contingencies), which have left them high and dry at the tops of flights of steps which nobody cares to go up. And yet the pullings down and buildings up cannot stop,—the energetic and by this time almost pampered population of building artisans which they employ cannot be turned adrift. And, meanwhile, the French Three per Cents. are at 67, or a trifle more. It is said this is the bitterest pill of all to the Emperor, and that he would do almost anything to get rid of this standing omen of instability to him and his.
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