Читать книгу Pencillings by the Way - Nathaniel Parker Willis - Страница 17

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FOYETIÉR—THE THRACIAN GLADIATOR—MADEMOISELLE MARS—DOCTOR FRANKLIN'S RESIDENCE IN PARIS—ANNUAL BALL FOR THE POOR.

I had the pleasure to day of being introduced to the young sculptor Foyetiér, the author of the new statue on the terrace of the Tuileries. Aside from his genius, he is interesting from a circumstance connected with his early history. He was a herd-driver in one of the provinces, and amused himself in his leisure moments with the carving of rude images, which he sold for a sous or two on market-days in the provincial town. The celebrated Dr. Gall fell in with him accidentally, and felt of his head, en passant. The bump was there which contains his present greatness, and the phrenologist took upon himself the risk of his education in the arts. He is now the first sculptor, beyond all competition, in France. His "Spartacus," the Thracian gladiator, is the admiration of Paris. It stands in front of the palace, in the most conspicuous part of the regal gardens, and there are hundreds of people about the pedestal at all hours of the day. The gladiator has broken his chain, and stands with his weapon in his hand, every muscle and feature breathing action, his body thrown back, and his right foot planted powerfully for a spring. It is a gallant thing. One's blood stirs to look at it.

Foyetiér is a young man, I should think about thirty. He is small, very plain in appearance; but he has a rapid, earnest eye, and a mouth of singular suavity of expression. I liked him extremely. His celebrity seems not to have trenched a step on the nature of his character. His genius is everywhere allowed, and he works for the king altogether, his majesty bespeaking everything he attempts, even in the model; but he is, certainly, of all geniuses, one of the most modest.

The celebrated Mars has come out from her retirement once more, and commenced an engagement at the Theatre Français. I went a short time since to see her play in Tartuffe. This stage is the home of the true French drama. Here Talma played when he and Mademoiselle Mars were the delight of Napoleon and of France. I have had few gratifications greater than that of seeing this splendid woman re-appear in the place were she won her brilliant reputation. The play, too, was Moliere's, and it was here that it was first performed. Altogether it was like something plucked back from history; a renewal, as in a magic mirror, of glories gone by.

I could scarce believe my eyes when she appeared as the "wife of Argon." She looked about twenty-five. Her step was light and graceful; Her voice was as unlike that of a woman of sixty as could well be imagined; sweet, clear, and under a control which gives her a power of expression I never had conceived before; her mouth had the definite, firm play of youth; her teeth (though the dentist might do that) were white and perfect, and her eyes can have lost none of their fire, I am sure. I never saw so quiet a player. Her gestures were just perceptible, no more; and yet they were done so exquisitely at the right moment—so unconsciously, as if she had not meant them, that they were more forcible than even the language itself. She repeatedly drew a low murmur of delight from the whole house with a single play of expression across her face, while the other characters were speaking, or by a slight movement of her fingers, in pantomimic astonishment or vexation. It was really something new to me. I had never before seen a first-rate female player in comedy. Leontine Fay is inimitable in tragedy; but, if there be any comparison between them, it is that this beautiful young creature overpowers the heart with her nature, while Mademoiselle Mars satisfies the uttermost demand of the judgment with her art.

I yesterday visited the house occupied by Franklin while he was in France. It is one of the most beautiful country residences in the neighborhood of Paris, standing on the elevated ground of Passy, and overlooking the whole city on one side, and the valley of the Seine for a long distance toward Versailles on the other. The house is otherwise celebrated. Madame de Genlis lived there while the present king was her pupil; and Louis XV. occupied it six months for the country air, while under the infliction of the gout—its neighborhood to the palace probably rendering it preferable to the more distant chateaux of St. Cloud or Versailles. Its occupants would seem to have been various enough, without the addition of a Lieutenant-General of the British army, whose hospitality makes it delightful at present. The lightning-rod, which was raised by Franklin, and which was the first conductor used in France, is still standing. The gardens are large, and form a sort of terrace, with the house on the front edge. It must be one of the sweetest places in the world in summer.

The great annual ball for the poor was given at the Academie Royale, a few nights since. This is attended by the king and royal family, and is ordinarily the most splendid affair of the season. It is managed by twenty or thirty lady-patronesses, who have the control of the tickets; and, though by no means exclusive, it is kept within very respectable limits; and, if one is content to float with the tide, and forego dancing, is an unusually comfortable and well-behaved spectacle.

I went with a large party at the early hour of eight. We fell into the train of carriages, advancing slowly between files of dragoons, and stood before the door in our turn in the course of an hour. The staircases were complete orangeries, with immense mirrors at every turn, and soldiers on guard, and servants in livery, from top to bottom. The long saloon, lighted by ten chandeliers, was dressed and hung with wreaths as a receiving-room; and passing on through the spacious lobbies, which were changed into groves of pines and exotics, we entered upon the grand scene. The coup d'œil would have astonished Aladdin. The theatre, which is the largest in Paris, and gorgeously built and ornamented, was thrown into one vast ball-room, ascending gradually from the centre to platforms raised at either end, one of which was occupied by the throne and seats for the king's family and suite. The four rows of boxes were crowded with ladies, and the house presented, from the floor to the paradis, one glittering and waving wall of dress, jewelry, and feathers. An orchestra of near a hundred musicians occupied the centre of the hall; and on either side of them swept by the long, countless multitudes of people, dressed with a union of taste and show; while, instead of the black coats which darken the complexion of a party in a republican country, every other gentleman was in a gay uniform; and polytechnic scholars, with their scarlet-faced coats, officers of the "National Guard" and the "line," gentlemen of the king's household, and foreign ministers, and attachés, presented a variety of color and splendor which nothing could exceed.

The theatre itself was not altered, except by the platform occupied by the king; it is sufficiently splendid as it stands; but the stage, whose area is much larger than that of the pit, was hung in rich drapery as a vast tent, and garnished to profusion with flags and arms. Along the sides, on a level with the lower row of boxes, extended galleries of crimson velvet, festooned with flowers. These were filled with ladies, and completed a circle about the house of beauty and magnificence, of which the king and his dazzling suite formed the corona. Chandeliers were hung close together from one end of the hall to the other. I commenced counting them once or twice, but some bright face flitting by in the dance interrupted me. An English girl near me counted fifty-five, and I think there must have been more. The blaze of light was almost painful. The air glittered, and the fine grain of the most delicate complexions was distinctly visible. It is impossible to describe the effect of so much light and space and music crowded into one spectacle. The vastness of the hall, so long that the best sight could not distinguish a figure at the opposite extremity, and so high as to absorb and mellow the vibration of a hundred instruments—the gorgeous sweep of splendor from one platform to the other, absolutely drowning the eye in a sea of gay colors, nodding feathers, jewelry, and military equipment—the delicious music, the strange faces, dresses, and tongues, (one-half of the multitude at least being foreigners), the presence of the king, and the gallant show of uniforms in his conspicuous suite, combined to make up a scene more than sufficiently astonishing. I felt the whole night the smothering consciousness of senses too narrow—eyes, ears, language, all too limited for the demand made upon them.

The king did not arrive till after ten. He entered by a silken curtain in the rear of the platform on which seats were placed for his family. The "Vive le Roi" was not so hearty as to drown the music, but his majesty bowed some twenty times very graciously, and the good-hearted queen curtsied, and kept a smile on her excessively plain face, till I felt the muscles of my own ache for her. King Philippe looks anxious. By the remarks of the French people about me when he entered, he has reason for it. I observed that the polytechnic scholars all turned their backs upon him; and one exceedingly handsome, spirited-looking boy, standing just at my side, muttered a "sacré!" and bit his lip, with a very revolutionary air, at the continuance of the acclamation. His majesty came down, and walked through the hall about midnight. His eldest son, the Duke of Orleans, a handsome, unoffending-looking youth of eighteen, followed him, gazing round upon the crowd with his mouth open, and looking very much annoyed at his part of the pageant. The young duke has a good figure, and is certainly a very beautiful dancer. His mouth is loose and weak, and his eyes are as opaque as agates. He wore the uniform of the Garde Nationale, which does not become him. In ordinary gentleman's dress, he is a very authentical copy of a Bond-street dandy, and looks as little like a Frenchman as most of Stultz's subjects. He danced all the evening, and selected, very popularly, decidedly the most vulgar women in the room, looking all the while as one who had been petted by the finest women in France (Leontine Fay among the number), might be supposed to look, under such an infliction. The king's second son, the Duke of Nemours, pursued the same policy. He has a brighter face than his brother, with hair almost white, and dances extremely well. The second daughter is also much prettier than the eldest. On the whole, the king's family is a very plain, though a very amiable one, and the people seem attached to them.

These general descriptions, are, after all, very vague. Here I have written half a sheet with a picture in my mind of which you are getting no semblable idea. Language is a mere skeleton of such things. The Academie Royale should be borne over the water like the chapel of Loretto, and set down in Broadway with all its lights, music, and people, to give you half a notion of the "Bal en faveur des Pauvres." And so it is with everything except the little histories of one's own personal atmosphere, and that is the reason why egotism should be held virtuous in a traveller, and the reason why one cannot study Europe at home.

After getting our American party places, I abandoned myself to the strongest current, and went in search of "lions." The first face that arrested my eye was that of the Duchess D'Istria, a woman celebrated here for her extraordinary personal beauty.

Directly opposite this lovely dutchess, in the other stage-box, sat Donna Maria, the young Queen of Portugal, surrounded by her relatives. The ex-empress, her mother, was on her right, her grandmother on her left, and behind her some half dozen of her Portuguese cousins. She is a little girl of twelve or fourteen, with a fat, heavy face, and a remarkably pampered, sleepy look. She was dressed like an old woman, and gaped incessantly the whole evening. The box was a perfect blaze of diamonds. I never before realized the beauty of these splendid stones. The necks, heads, arms, and waists of the ladies royal were all streaming with light. The necklace of the empress mother particularly flashed on the eye in every part of the house. By the unceasing exclamations of the women, it was an unusually brilliant show, even here. The little Donna has a fine, well-rounded chin; and when she smiled in return to the king's bow, I thought I could see more than a child's character in the expression of her mouth. I should think a year or two of mental uneasiness might let out a look of intelligence through her heavy features. She is likely to have it, I think, with the doubtful fortunes that seem to beset her.

I met Don Pedro often in society before his departure upon his expedition. He is a short, well-made man, of great personal accomplishment, and a very bad expression, rather aggravated by an unfortunate cutaneous eruption. The first time I saw him, I was induced to ask who he was, from the apparent coldness and dislike with which he was treated by a lady whose beauty had strongly arrested my attention. He sat by her on a sofa in a very crowded party, and seemed to be saying something very earnestly, which made the lady's Spanish eyes flash fire, and brought a curl of very positive anger upon a pair of the loveliest lips imaginable. She was a slender, aristocratic-looking creature, and dressed most magnificently. After glancing at them a minute or two, I made up my mind that, from the authenticity of his dress and appointments, he was an Englishman, and that she was some French lady of rank whom he was particularly annoying with his addresses. On inquiry, the gentleman proved to be Don Pedro, and the lady the Countess de Lourle, his sister! I have often met her since, and never without wondering how two of the same family could look so utterly unlike each other. The Count de Lourle is called the Adonis of Paris. He is certainly a very splendid fellow, and justifies the romantic admiration of his wife, who married him clandestinely, giving him her left hand in the ceremony, as is the etiquette, they say, when a princess marries below her rank. One can not help looking with great interest on a beautiful creature like this, who has broken away from the imposing fetters of a royal sphere, to follow the dictates of natural feeling. It does not occur so often in Europe that one may not sentimentalize about it without the charge of affectation.

To return to the ball. The king bowed himself out a little after midnight, and with him departed most of the fat people, and all the little girls. This made room enough to dance, and the French set themselves at it in good earnest. I wandered about for an hour or two; after wearying my imagination quite out in speculating on the characters and rank of people whom I never saw before and shall probably never see again, I mounted to the paradis to take a last look down upon the splendid scene, and made my exit. I should be quite content never to go to such a ball again, though it was by far the most splendid scene of the kind I ever saw.