AN AFTERNOON AT AUTEUIL.
Tired for the moment of lounging up and down the boulevard, satiated with the sight of the glittering fantastic articles de Paris in the shop-windows, and weary of the ceaseless stir and bustle of the liveliest thoroughfare in the world, I was sitting, the other day, on one of the benches which the considerate municipality of the French capital has liberally provided for the benefit of weary pilgrims, meditating a new excitement. To quit the animated scene before me, and to plunge suddenly into the silence and solitude of Faubourg St. Germain, certainly promised a sensation of a decided kind quite equal to the climax of a Turkish bath; but I was repelled by the recollection of the gloomy aspect of that region, where everything and everybody seem to wear a scowl of Ultramontane wrath, from the pale-faced students of the seminary, and the care-worn priests, down to the beadle of St. Sulpice; from the great mute hotels, with all their gates and windows closed toward the street, down to the little book-shops with windows full of portraits of ecclesiactical monseigneurs in lithographic black and white, each looking as grim and sour as if he were listening to a telling speech from the Devil’s Advocate on his own case; dismal tomes of polemical theology in funereal livery of black and gold, and pamphlets of every size and price denouncing one Iscariot (supposed to live somewhere near the Louvre), on sallow, bilious-coloured pages.
The Marais also suggested itself to my mind as the seat of quiet and repose, but I did not feel in sufficiently good spirits to face the depressing exhibition of the elaborate economies which prevail in the head-quarters of the shabby-genteel. As I was thus hesitating in which direction I should turn, up rolled an omnibus, and saved me the trouble of making up my mind. In an instant I had clambered up the iron rigging and taken a vacant seat on the forecastle—I mean the roof—without knowing or caring whether my vehicle was a red or a yellow,—a “gazelle” or an “elephant,” or “swallow,” or a “gondola.” I had not the most remote idea whither I was bound. A glance at the sides of the ‘bus, would, of course, have enlightened me on that point, but I carefully averted my eyes. Just then I shared Dundreary’s feeling—I didn’t like to look because I liked to wonder. There was something quite refreshing in my utter ignorance of the destination to which the three podgy grey horses were conveying me.
The course lies eastward. Presently, dashing across the Place de la Concorde, we get a passing glimpse of the grand vista of the Champs Elysées, with its pleasant avenues full of children and nurses, six-goat carriages and vendors of lemonade and cakes. In a few seconds more the Seine is flashing its whitey-brown waters in the sun. The swimming-baths are gay with fluttering pennons; the washerwomen in their barges are hard at work thumping the obstinately dirty clothes with wooden mallets; the tide keeps the clumsy wheels of the colour-grinding maching in lively motion.
We follow the course of the river till, turning off beyond the Pont d’Jena, the fat little horses slacken pace in order to climb rather a steep incline. Here we get a capital panoramic view of Paris, with its domes and towers rising out of the dull red and white labyrinth of streets. The dusty plain of the Champ de Mars lies before us on the other side of the river, and the ceaseless, monotonous tattoo of the young drummers practising among the trees reaches our ears in softened cadence. We have surmounted the col now, and enter a pleasant highway lined with trees and villas. The houses by the road-side vary in style. A few are grand mansions embowered in groves, and here and there one sees a coat-of-arms or quaint, heraldic supporters interwoven with the scroll-work of the tall iron gates and railings. The majority of the dwelling-houses are villas of moderate size, plain and elegant, with none of the elaborate coxcombry of what your cockney calls his cottage ornée. They are the refuge of government clerks and other officials—men with fixed salaries of not too liberal a figure, who have been driven from their old quarters on a third floor in the heart of the capital by the Emperor’s demolitions and buildings. The new mansions are too dear for them. Domestic seclusion is apparently not much heeded here. Most of the windows are wide open, the doors stand agape. I see the cook in her little kitchen (which is almost invariably the room to the left of the door as you enter, and immediately opposite the parlour or dining-room on the other side of the passage), surrounded by a bright array of those copper skillets and saucepans in which she concocts her mysterious but piquant messes. I look in upon the lady of the house seated at her embroidery or reading the last new novel in her easy-chair. I have a good view of the bonne and her little charges in another chamber, where they are playing in that reserved manner in which French children seem to me always to take their sport. Alphonse never for a moment forgetting his natty velvet blouse, or Marie her miniature skirts. Soon shops begin to mingle meekly with, and then to bustle, and finally to displace the villas. There are no more gardens lining the road, but a straggling line of trees keeps us company for a little way further. With an explosive crack of the driver’s whip, a demonstrative gallop by the podgy steeds, and much clatter on the nobbly causeway, the ‘bus wheels round suddenly into the little square and halts opposite to a large, staring, white-washed building, which proclaims itself in big blue letters, aided by a dingy tricolor, as the Mairie of Passy.
A very brief acquaintance with Passy enables me to discover that it is engaged in a continual and energetic protest against a calumny as cruel and fatal to its business as that which Dr. Isaac Bickerstaffe published against Partridge, the almanack-maker. The Doctor declared the weather-prophet was dead; the prophet declared he was alive. In the same way a wicked law has declared Passy to be part and parcel of Paris; Passy repudiates the charge with scorn and anger. By a legal fiction it may be so, but as to the individuality of Passy being dead, we have it on the word and honour of every inhabitant that it never
