PARIS REINTERVIEWED.* WHY does not somebody present us with a
picture of Paris as it is, by way of a contrast to the flood of memories of an extinct city with which English observers of every description —peace-observers and war-correspondents, officials and non- officials—have been inundating the market, ever since the "Englishman in Paris," so unfairly supposed to be Sir Richard Wallace, in spite of doubtful French and doubtful breeding, first set the example of moralising after date ? For the Paris of to-day is the same singular problem as ever. Always the same smiling surface of levity and pleasure, with the wild undercurrent of discontent and rebellion against the nature of things which is ever ready and waiting to surge up into a sudden activity,—but with all that, nowadays, a kind of settling down to the Republican system which has never been known before. The independence of manner towards what were once called social superiors, which has so long been characteristic in America, grows very marked indeed. There is little or no offence in it, where none is taken. But the marked obsequiousness of the British tradesman, combined with the sort of "I could buy you if I liked" manner which
• Some Memories of Paris. By F. Ado'phni. London: Blackwood and Sons.
so often lurks in his address, is nowhere to be found, any more than the weary paragraphs about all the doings and movements of Royalty's nineteenth cousins, and the American fathers-in-law of impecunious Dukes, which seem to give such inexhaustible pleasure in the reading to the great public at home. The Republic is an increasing fact, local elections turn upon local merit, and go without political significance.
The guardian of the Conciergerie is grave and historical about Marie Antoinette and Robespierre, and explodes in fits of silent laughter over the cell where the Duke of Orleans was confined. Nobody except the secluded party seems to take Royalty seriously, which is a bad sign for its revival. It is as if Louis Napoleon had burlesqued the whole thing.
Meantime, English shops and German breweries spring up everywhere. The music-halls, except in a defiance of the censorship which is more marked than ever, thrive mainly on English comic songs and dances, " Ta-ra-ra-boom- de-ay," and " Linger longer, Loo," being to the front all round, though a strong desire for five francs where two used to be enough is prominent in all the places. Bat earth stands at Gaze-and-Cook, like Joshua's moon in Ajalon ; and tourists dine cheaply everywhere, especially at the Duval restaurants,—or at Leon's, where three francs will provide five courses and a pint of champagne. Female bicyclists disport themselves in uniforms in the Bois. The theatres show a marked falling-off in merit, and acting looks
like a lost art, except when some hale veteran like Taillade comes back in some old play, to show the public that praises
of the past are not mere talk, when men acted to act, and not to advertise. For the spirit of advertisement, in all its ugly manifestations, is the guiding genius of the day in Paris, even more than elsewhere, even if a certain sense of bright. ness relieves the long-suffering walls and hoardings from the full British sense of desolation.
When all these things suggest so much to write about, we begin to grow impatient over so many reminiscences of the last imperial generation. It seems to us that all has been told about the Commune and its sad history, that possibly can be or need be or should be told. We do not want to hear any more of the unhappy Emperor's illness and decay, or of the unpopularity of the Empress, or of the surroundings of their Court. Still less of the starvation of the Siege, and of the English gifts of food, which by no means made up to the French mind for expected succour of a very different kind. The French had not learned the lesson which everybody must learn soon, with the help of American experience, that talk of interference does not go beyond talk nowadays with the best of us. The chapter in Mr. Adolphus's book which will per- haps do the most to satisfy a reasonable cariosity, is that which relates to General Boulanger, though it appears rather to be written out of the light of subsequent experiences than from what events can have justified at the time. According to himself, however, Mr. Adolphus took the General at his true value from the first, as a mere pretender of the very weakest kind, full of a vague estimate of his own powers and destiny which seemed to have been sprung upon him by accident,—
" He had jumped with violent abruptness, unprepared by character or by previous contact with the political or social world, to the highest position open to a French soldier ; he had become master of the army and a figure before Europe ; his situa- tion and his reputed power as a statesman were boiling [sic] higher every day; the destinies of his country were supposed to lie in his hands, and a portion of the nation was looking up to him as a heaven-sent leader to the glorious unknown."
But according to Mr. Adolphus his eyes suggested nothing but aggressive vanity, and feebleness and conceit were the only marked features to be found about him. The same idea has really been better conveyed by the late Mr. Sala, in his account of a dinner given to the General in London by Mr.
Lewis Wingfield, with an intent to "open Boulanger," and find out what was in him ; and we suppose that the explana- tion of him is quite accepted now. But Mr. Adolphus's
account of him will be found amusing, and still more his description of the famous black horse :—" A prodigiously showy horse, as gorgeous as he was famous ; he was-composed principally of a brandishing tail, a new-moon neck "—not that we know what that means—" a looking-glass skin, and the action of Demosthenes "—where we are again at fault. " He seemed to possess two paces only,—a prancing walk and awindmill canter . . . ;His manners were so superb.; tire that, with all his firework display, he could not haVe
been either difficult to handle or tiring to sit. Never was a horse so emphatically suited to its rider ; the two were identical in their ways ; each was as gilded as the other That soldier and that horse incarnated so livingly the popular idea of glory, that every soul in the long lines of crowd grew utterly demented And the General, feeling that his work was good, rocked, swung, and smiled, then smiled, swung, and rocked, and took his place for the march-past." The
public were impressed, but the tribune where the writer sat was disgusted, and the President obliterated and sulky. Mr. Adolphus's proceeding is a little like breaking a butterfly upon a wheel ; but it appears to us that the truer and graver moral of the Boulauger episode is that it did perhaps more than anything else to disenchant the country of its old craving for a leader at any price.
A chapter of another kind, to which another class of readers will turn in preference, relates to an interview accorded to Mr. Adolphus, who appears not to be above these terrible methods of the modern inquisition, by the eminent Mr. Worth, a potentate quite as great as Boulanger after his kind, and of a far more enduring form of sovereignty. Empires may rise and be disestablished, and Republics shatter thrones and be again reshattered. But Fashion is a despotism always, and her high-priest of the hour is among the foremost of his day. Mr. Worth, whose English nationality must always be a source of pride to our inferior nation, seems to have been too artful for Mr. Adolphus, and to have diplomatised so successfully as to leave his interviewer more in the dark than when he came as to the secret of his art and the story of his rise to power. On the other hand, he seems to have enter- tained his visitor royally, and to have so intensely impressed him with the charms of Mrs. Worth as to make him appear as susceptible to feminine charm as Boulanger himself. If she was once a " young person," as Mr. Adolphus rather ver- nacularly calls her, at a shop in the Rue Richelieu, she had become an accomplished woman of the world, with combined dignity and simplicity, and infinite gentleness of movemete. "Never did white satin appear so completely absorbed into the person of its wearer; she and her gown were's() absolutely one as to present themselves to the author's thoughts as synonymous, simultaneous, identical, unseverable. Who on earth should wear white satin at six in the morning if she did not ? " With this " delicate picture of a delicate woman," so sympathetically attractive and with so grand an air that the dress was, after all, merely one of the details of her presence, and her husband wearing a crownless straw bat, Mr. Adolphus dined in a vast greenhouse, which seemed to cover an acre of surface, amidst a forest of palm- leaves, tree-ferns, variegated verdures, and fastastic flowers. On this Monte-Cristo we prefer to let the curtain fall, and not go into the details of a conversation where nothing was said. No wonder that the historical beauties of the French Opera-House receive but scanty honour at the author's hands after his dreams of Madame Worth, and for her sake we gladly forgive him even so forcible an expression as a simulta- aeons gown, absorbed into its wearer's person. Our readers will perceive that Mr. Adolphus sometimes uses strange forms of speech, and the Demosthenian horse will still suggest some wonder if that historic beast was wont to neigh with pebbles in his mouth. But those who care for more of the reiterated gossip about Louis Napoleon and the Commune, the fall of the Empire, the decorous entry of the wicked Germans, and the misbehaviour of the excited French—which surely might be forgotten now—can turn for their information to the pages of the book before us.
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