Chapter III: Part 3

There were about six hundred Deputies in the town, who had not been there the day before, and who would leave it before the sun set that evening, but they bore themselves so modestly that their presence could not disturb the sleepy, sunny beauty of the grand old gardens and of the silent thoroughfares, and when we rattled up to the Hôtel des Réservoirs at one o'clock we made more of a disturbance with the coach-horn than had the arrival of both Chambers of Deputies. These gentlemen were at _déjeuner_ when we arrived, and eating and drinking as leisurely and good-naturedly as though they had nothing in hand of more importance than a few calls to make or a game of cards at the club. Indeed, it looked much more as though Versailles had been invaded by a huge wedding-party than by a convention of Presidential electors. Some of the Deputies had brought their wives with them, and few as they were, they leavened and enlivened the group of black coats as the same number of women of no other nation could have done, and the men came from different tables to speak to them, to drink their health, and to pay them pretty compliments; and the good fellows of the two Chambers hustled about like so many maîtres d'hôtel seeing that such a one had a place at the crowded tables, that the salad of this one was being properly dressed, and that another had a match for his cigarette.

Besides the Deputies, there were a half-dozen young and old Parisians--those who make it a point to see everything and to be seen everywhere. They would have attended quite as willingly a fête of flowers, or a prize-fight between two English jockeys at Longchamps, and at either place they would have been as completely at home. They were typical Parisians of the highest world, to whom even the selection of a President for all France was not without its interest. With them were the diplomats, who were pretending to take the change of executive seriously, as representatives of the powers, but who were really whispering that it would probably bring back the leadership of the fashionable world to the Élysée, where it should be, and that it meant the reappearance of many royalist families in society, and the inauguration of magnificent functions, and the reopening of ballrooms long unused.

It was throughout a pretty, lazy, well-bred scene. Outside the entrance to the hotel, coachmen with the cockades of the different embassies in their hats were standing at ease in their shirtsleeves, and with their pipes between their teeth; and the gentlemen, having finished their breakfast, strolled out into the court-yard and watched the hostlers rubbing down the coach-horses, or walked up the hill to the palace, where the boy sentries were hugging their guns, and waving back the few surprised tourists who had come to look at the pictures in the historical gallery, and who did not know that the palace on that day was being used for the prologue of a new historical play.

At the gates leading to the great Court of Honor there were possibly two hundred people in all. They came from the neighboring streets, and not from Paris. None of these people spoke in tones louder than those of ordinary converse, and they speculated with indolent interest as to the outcome of the afternoon's voting. A young man in a brown straw hat found an objection to Casimir-Perier as a candidate because he was so rich, but he withdrew his objection when an older man in a blouse pointed out that Casimir-Perier would make an excellent appearance on horseback.

"The President of France," he said, "must be a man who can look well on a horse;" and the crowd of old women in white caps, and boy soldiers with their hands on their baggy red breeches, from the barracks across the square, nodded their heads approvingly. It was a most interesting sight when compared with the anxious, howling mob that surrounds the building in which a Presidential convention is being held at home.

It is also interesting to remember that a special telephone wire was placed in the Chamber at Versailles in order that the news of the election might be communicated to the newspaper offices in Paris, and that this piece of enterprise was considered so remarkable that it was commented upon by the entire newspaper press of that city. In Chicago, at the time of the last Presidential convention, when a nomination merely and not an election was taking place, the interest of the people justified the Western Union Telegraph Company in sending out fifteen million words from the building during the three days of the convention. Wires ran from it directly to the offices of all the principal newspapers from San Francisco to Boston, and in Chicago itself there were two hundred extra operators, and relays of horsemen galloping continually with "copy" from the convention to the main offices of the different telegraph companies.

This merely shows a difference of temperament: the American likes to know what has happened while it is hot, and to know all that has happened. The European and the Parisian, on this occasion at least, was content to wait at a café in ease and comfort until he was told the result. He did not feel that he could change that result in any way by going out to Versailles in the hot sun and cheering his candidate from the outside of an iron fence.

At the gate of the Place d'Armes there was a crowd of fifty people, watched by a few hundred more from under the shade of the trees and the awnings of the restaurants around the square. The dust rose in little eddies, and swept across the square in yellow clouds, and the people turned their backs to it and shrugged their shoulders and waited patiently. Inside of the Court of Honor a single line of lancers stood at their horses' heads, their brass helmets flashing like the signals of a dozen heliographs. Officers with cigarettes and heavily braided sleeves strolled up and down, and took themselves much more seriously than they did the matter in hand. A dozen white-waistcoated and high-hatted Deputies standing outside of the Chamber suggested nothing more momentous or national than a meeting of a Presbyterian General Assembly. Bicyclers of both sexes swung themselves from their machines and peered curiously through the iron fence, and, seeing nothing more interesting than the fluttering pennants of the lancers, mounted their wheels again and disappeared in the clouds of dust.

In the meanwhile Casimir-Perier has been elected on the first ballot, which was taken without incident, save when one Deputy refused to announce his vote as the roll was called until he was addressed as "citizen," and not as "monsieur." This silly person was finally humored, and the result was declared, and Casimir-Perier left the hall to put on a dress-suit in order that he might receive the congratulations of his friends. As the first act of the new President, this must not be considered as significant of the particular man who did it, but as illustrating the point of view of his countrymen, who do not see that if the highest office in the country cannot lend sufficient dignity to the man who holds it, a dress-suit or his appearance on horseback is hardly able to do so. The congratulations last a long time, and are given so heartily and with such eloquence that the new President weeps while he grasps the hand of his late confrères, and says to each, "You must help me; I need you all." Neither is the fact that the President wept on this occasion significant of anything but that he was laboring under much excitement, and that the temperament of the French is one easily moved. People who cannot see why a strong man should weep merely because he has become a President must remember that Casimir-Perier wears the cross of the Legion of Honor for bravery in action on the field of battle.

The congratulations come to an end at last, and the new President leaves the palace, and takes his place in the open carriage that has been waiting his pleasure these last two hours. There is a great crowd around the gate now, all Versailles having turned out to cheer him, and he can hear them crying "Vive le Président!" from far across the length of the Court of Honor.

M. Dupuy, his late rival at the polls, seats himself beside him on his left, and two officers in uniform face him from the front. Before his carriage are two open lines of cavalry, proudly conscious in their steel breastplates and with their carbines on the hip that they are to convoy the new President to Paris; and behind him, in close order, are the lancers, with their flashing brass helmets, and their pennants fluttering in the wind. The horses start forward with a sharp clatter of hoofs on the broad stones of the square, the Deputies raise their high hats, and with a jangling of steel chains and swords, and with the pennants snapping in the breeze like tiny whips, the new President starts on his triumphal ride into Paris. The colossal statues of France's great men, from Charlemagne to Richelieu, look down upon him curiously as he whirls between them to the iron gateway and disappears in the alley of mounted men and cheering civilians. He is out of it in a moment, and has galloped on in a whirling cloud of yellow dust towards the city lying seven miles away, where, six months later, by his unexpected resignation, he is to create a consternation as intense as that which preceded his election.

It would be interesting to know of what Casimir-Perier thought as he rode through the empty streets in the cool of the summer evening, startling the villagers at their dinners, and bringing them on a run to the doors by the ringing jangle of his mounted men and the echoing hoofs. Perhaps he thought of the anarchists who might attempt his life, or of those who succeeded with the man whose place he had taken, or, what is more likely, he gave himself up to the moment, and said to himself, as each new face was framed by a window or peered through a doorway: "Yes, it is the new President of France, Casimir-Perier; not only of France, but of all her colonies. By to-night they will know in Siam, in Tunis, in Algiers, and in the swamps of Dahomey that there is a new step on the floor, and governors of provinces, and native rulers of barbarous states, and _sous-préfets_, and pretenders to the throne of France, will consider anxiously what the change means to them, and will be measuring their fortunes with mine."

The carriage and its escort enter the cool shadows of the Bois de Boulogne at Passy, and pass Longchamps, where the French President annually reviews the army of France, and where now the victorias and broughams and fiacres draw to one side; and he notes the look of amused interest on the faces of their occupants as his outriders draw rapidly nearer, and the smiles of intelligence as they comprehend that it is the new President, and he catches a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of nodding faces, and hats half raised in salute as he gallops past. It must have been a pleasant drive. Very few men have taken it. Very few men have swept round the circle of the Arc de Triomphe and seen the mass of glittering carriages stretching far down the avenue part and make way for them on either side.

Casimir-Perier's brief term included many imbitterments, but it is a question if they will ever destroy the sweetness of that moment when power first touched him as he was borne back to Paris the President of France; and in his retirement he will recall that ride in the summer twilight, which the refractory Deputies who caused his downfall have never taken, and hear again the people cheering at Versailles, and the galloping horses, and see the crowd that waited for him in the Place de la Concorde and ran beside his carriage across the bridge.

* * * * *

Although the funeral procession was not to leave the Élysée until ten o'clock on Sunday morning, the thrifty citizens of Paris began to prepare for it as early as eleven o'clock on Saturday night. The Champs Élysées at that hour was lined with tables, boxes, and ladders, and any other portable object that could afford from its top a view of the pageant and standing-room, for which one might reasonably ask a franc. This barricade stretched in an unbroken front, which extended far back under the trees from the Avenue Marigny to the Place de la Concorde, where it spread out over the raised sidewalks and around the fountains and islands of safety, until the square was transformed into what looked like a great market-place. It was one of the most curious sights that Parisians have ever seen in time of peace. Over four thousand people were encamped around these temporary stands, some drinking and eating, others sleeping, and others busily and noisily engaged in erecting still more stands, while the falling of the boards that were to form them rattled as they fell from the carts to the asphalt like the reports of musketry. Each stand was lit by a lantern and a smoking lamp; and the men and women, as they moved about in the half-darkness, or slept curled up beneath the carts and tables, suggested the bivouac of an army, or that part of a besieged city where the people had gathered with their household goods for safety.

The procession the next morning moved down the Champs Élysées and across the Place de la Concorde and along the Rue de Rivoli to Notre Dame, from whence, after the ceremony there, it proceeded on to the Panthéon. All of this line of march was guarded on either side by double lines of infantry, and one can obtain an idea of how great was the crowd behind them by the fact that on the morning of the procession five hundred people were taken in ambulances to the different hospitals of Paris. This included those who had fainted in the crush, or who had been overcome by the heat, or who had fallen from one of the many tottering scaffoldings. Each of the great vases along the iron fence of the Tuileries held one or two men, one of whom sat opposite us across the Rue de Rivoli, who had been there six hours, like Stylites on his pillar, except that the Parisian had an opera-glass, a morning paper, and a bottle of red wine to keep him company. The trees in the Tuileries were blackened with men, and the sky-line of every house-top moved with them. The crowd was greatest perhaps in the Place de la Concorde, where it spread a black carpet over the great square, which parted and fell away before the repeated charges of the cavalry like a piece of cloth before a pair of shears. It was a most orderly crowd, and an extremely good-humored one, and it manifested no strong feeling at any time, except over two features of the procession, which had nothing to do with the death of Carnot. Except when there was music, which was much too seldom, the crowd chattered and laughed as it might have done at a purely military function, and only the stern hisses of a few kept the majority from applauding any one who passed for whom they held an especial interest.

The procession left the Élysée at ten o'clock, to the accompaniment of minute-guns from the battery on the pier near the Chamber of Deputies. It was led by a very fine body of cuirassiers, who presented a better appearance than any of the soldiers in the procession. It was not the great military display that had been expected; there was no artillery in line, and the navy was not represented, save by a few guards around the wreath from the officers of that particular service. The regiments of infantry, who were followed by the cavalry, lacked form, and marched as though they had not convinced themselves that what they were doing was worth doing well. The infantry was followed by the mourning-wreaths sent by the Senate and by the different monarchs of Europe. These wreaths form an important and characteristic part of the funeral of a great man in France, and as the French have studied this form of expressing their grief for some time, they produce the most magnificent and beautiful tributes, of greater proportions and in better taste than any that can be seen in any other country in the world. The larger of these wreaths were hung from great scaffoldings, supported on floats, each drawn by four or six horses. Some of these were so large that a man standing upright within them could not touch the opposite inner edges with his finger-tips. They were composed entirely of orchids or violets, with bands of purple silk stretching from side to side, and bearing the names of the senders in gold letters. The wreath sent by the Emperor of Russia was given a place by itself, and mounted magnificently on a car draped with black, and surrounded by a special guard of military and servants of the household. The wreaths of the royalties were followed by more soldiers, and then came the black and silver catafalque that bore the body of the late President. The wheels of this car were muffled with cloth, and the horses that drew it were completely hidden under trappings of black and silver; the reins were broad white ribbons, and there was a mute at each horse's head. As the car passed, there was the first absolute silence of the morning, and many people crossed themselves, and all of the men stood bareheaded.

Separated from the catafalque by but a few rods, and walking quite alone, was the new President, Casimir-Perier. There were soldiers and attendants between him and the line of soldiers which guarded the sidewalks, but he was alone in that there was no one near him. According to the protocol he should not have been there at all, as the etiquette of this function ruled that the new President should not intrude his person upon the occasion when the position held by his predecessor is being officially recognized for the last time. Casimir-Perier, however, chose to disregard the etiquette of this protocol, arguing that the occasion was exceptional, and that no one had a better right to mourn for the late President than the man who had succeeded to the dangers and responsibilities of that office. He was also undoubtedly moved by the fact that it was generally believed that his life would be attempted if he did walk conspicuously in the procession. Had Carnot died a natural death, Casimir-Perier's presence at the funeral would have been in debatable taste, but Carnot's assassination, and the threats which hung thick in the air, made the President take the risk he did, in spite of the fact that Carnot had been murdered in a public place, and not on account of it.

It was distinctly a courageous thing for him to do, and it was done against the wishes of his best friends and the entreaties of his family, who spent the entire night before the procession in a chapel praying for his safety. He walked erect, with his eyes turned down, and with his hat at his side. He was in evening dress, with the crimson sash of the Legion of Honor across his breast, and he presented a fine and soldierly bearing, and made an impression, both by his appearance and by his action, that could not have been gained so soon in any other manner.

The embassies and legations followed Casimir-Perier in an irregular mass of glittering groups. All of these men were on foot. There was no exception permitted to this rule; and it was interesting to see Lord Dufferin in the uniform of a viceroy of India, which he wore instead of his diplomatic uniform, marching in the dust in the same line with the firemen and letter-carriers. The ambassadors and their attachés were undoubtedly the most brilliant and picturesque features of the occasion, and the United States ambassador and his secretaries were, on account of the contrast their black-and-white evening dress made to the colors and ribbons of the others, on this occasion, the most conspicuous and appropriately dressed men present.

But what best pleased the French people were two girls dressed in the native costumes of Alsace and Lorraine. They headed the deputation from those provinces. The girl who represented Alsace was particularly beautiful, with long black hair parted in the middle, and hanging down her back in long plaits. She wore the characteristic head-dress of the Alsacian women, and a short red skirt, black velvet bodice, and black stockings. She carried the French flag in front of her draped in crêpe, and as she stepped briskly forward the wind blew the black bow on her hair and the folds of the flag about her face, and gave her a living and spirited air that in no way suited the occasion, but which delighted the populace. They applauded her and her companion from one end of the march to the other, and the spectacle must have rendered the German ambassador somewhat uncomfortable, and made him wish for a billet among a people who could learn to forget. The only other feature of the procession which called forth applause, which no one tried to suppress, was the presence in it of an old general who was mistaken by the spectators for Marshal Canrobert. This last of the marshals of France was too ill to march in the funeral cortége; but the old soldier, who looked not unlike him, and whose limping gait and bent back and crutch-stick led him to be mistaken for the marshal, served the purpose quite as well. One wondered if it did not embarrass the veteran to find himself so suddenly elevated into the rôle of popular idol of the hour; but perhaps he persuaded himself that it was his white hair and crutch and many war-medals which called forth the ovation, and that he deserved it on his own account--as who can say he did not?

The unpleasant incident of the day was one which was unfortunately acted in full view of the balconies of the hotels Meurice and Continental. These were occupied by most of the foreigners visiting Paris, and were virtually the grandstands of the spectacle.

In the Rue Castiglione, which separated the two hotels, and in full sight of these critical onlookers, a horse was taken with the blind staggers, and upset a stand, throwing those who sat upon it out into the street. In an instant the crash of the falling timbers and the cries of the half-dozen men and women who had been precipitated into the street struck panic into the crowd of sight-seers on the pavement and among the firemen who were at that moment marching past. The terror of another dynamite outrage was in the minds of all, and without waiting to learn what had happened, or to even look, the thousands of people broke into a confused mass of screaming, terrified creatures, running madly in every direction, and changing the quiet solemnity of the moment into a scene of horror and panic. The firemen dropped the wreath they were carrying and fled with the crowd; and then the French soldiers who were lining the pavements, to the astonishment and disgust of the Americans and English on the balconies, who were looking down like spectators at a play, tucked their guns under their arms and joined in the mad rush for safety. It was a sight that made even the women on the balconies keep silence in shame for them. It was pathetic, ridiculous, and inexcusable, and the boy officers on duty would have gained the sympathy of the unwilling spectators had they cut their men down with their swords, and shown the others that he who runs away from a falling grandstand is not needed to live to fight a German army later. It is true that the men who ran away were only boys fresh from the provinces, with dull minds filled with the fear of what an anarchist might do; but it showed a lack of discipline that should have made the directors of the Salon turn the military pictures in that gallery to the wall, until the picture exhibited in the Rue Castiglione was effaced from the minds of the visiting strangers. Imagine a squad of New York policemen running away from a horse with the blind staggers, and not, on the contrary, seizing the chance to club every one within reach back to the sidewalk! Remember the London bobby who carried a dynamite bomb in his hand from the hall of the Houses of Parliament, and the Chicago police who walked into a real anarchist mob over the bodies of their comrades, and who answered the terrifying bombs with the popping of their revolvers! It is surprising that Napoleon, looking down upon the scene in the Rue Castiglione from the top of his column, did not turn on his pedestal.

After such an exhibition as this it was only natural that the people should turn from the soldiers to find the greater interest in the miles of wreaths that came from every corner of France. These were the expressions of the truer sympathy with the dead President, and there seemed to be more sentiment and real regret in the little black bead wreaths from the villages in the south and west of France than there were in all the great wreaths of orchids and violets purchased on the boulevards.

The procession had been two hours in passing a given point. It had moved at ten o'clock, and it was four in the afternoon before it dispersed at the Panthéon, and Deputies in evening dress and attachés in uniform and judges in scarlet robes could be seen hurrying over Paris in fiacres, faint and hot and cross, for the first taste of food and drink that had touched their lips since early morning. A few hours later there was not a soldier out of his barracks, the scaffoldings had been taken to pieces, the spectators had been distributed in trains to the environs, the bands played again in the gardens, and the theatres opened their doors. Paris had taken off her mourning, and fallen back into her interrupted routine of pleasure, and had left nothing in the streets to show that Carnot's body had passed over them save thousands of scraps of greasy newspapers in which the sympathetic spectators of the solemn function had wrapped their breakfasts.

IV

THE GRAND PRIX AND OTHER PRIZES

I think the most satisfying thing about the race for the Grand Prix at Longchamps is the knowledge that every one in Paris is justifying your interest in the event by being just as much excited about it as you are. You have the satisfaction of feeling that you are with the crowd, or that the crowd is with you, as you choose to put it, and that you move in sympathy with hundreds of thousands of people, who, though they may not be at the race-track in person, wish they were, which is the next best thing, and which helps you in the form of moral support, at least. You feel that every one who passes by knows and approves of your idea of a holiday, and will quite understand when you ride out on the Champs Élysées at eleven o'clock in the morning with four other men packed in one fiacre, or when, for no apparent reason, you hurl your hat into the air.

There are two ways of reaching Longchamps, the right way and the wrong way. The wrong way is to go with the crowd the entire distance through the Bois, and so find yourself stopped half a mile from the race-track in a barricade of carriages and hired fiacres, with the wheels scraping, and the noses of the horses rubbing the backs of the carriages in front. This is entertaining for a quarter of an hour, as you will find that every American or English man and woman you have ever met is sitting within talking distance of you, and as you weave your way in and out like a shuttle in a great loom you have a chance to bow to a great many friends, and to gaze for several minutes at a time at all of the celebrities of Paris. But after an hour has passed, and you have discovered that your driver is not as clever as the others in stealing ground and pushing himself before his betters, you begin to grow hot, dusty, and cross, and when you do arrive at the track you are not in a proper frame of mind to lose money cheerfully and politely, like the true sportsman that you ought to be.

The right way to go is through the Bois by the Lakes, stopping within sound of the waterfall at the Café de la Cascade. The advantage of this is that you escape the crowd, and that you have the pleasing certainty in your mind throughout the rest of the afternoon of knowing that you will be able to find your carriage again when the races are over. If you leave your fiacre at the main entrance, you will have to pick it out from three or four thousand others, all of which look exactly alike; and even if you do tie a red handkerchief around the driver's whip, you will find that six hundred other people have thought of doing the same thing, and you will be an hour in finding the right one, and you will be jostled at the same time by the boys in blouses who are hunting up lost carriages, and finding the owners to fit them.

You can avoid all this if you go to the Cascade and take your coachman's little ticket, and send him back to wait for you in the stables of the café, not forgetting to give him something in advance for his breakfast. It is then only a three minutes' walk from the restaurant among the trees to the back door of the race-track, and in five minutes after you have left your carriage you will have passed the sentry at the ticket-box, received your ticket from the young woman inside of it, given it to the official with a high hat and a big badge, and will be within the enclosure, with your temper unruffled and your boots immaculate. And then, when the races are over, you have only to return to the restaurant and hand your coachman's ticket to the tall chasseur, and let him do the rest, while you wait at a little round table and order cooling drinks.

All great race meetings look very much alike. There are always the long grandstand with human beings showing from the lowest steps to the sky-line; the green track, and the miles of carriages and coaches encamped on the other side; the crowd of well-dressed people in the enclosure, and the thin-legged horses cloaked mysteriously in blankets and stalking around the paddock; the massive crush around the betting-booths, that sweeps slowly in eddies and currents like a great body of water; and the rush which answers the starting-bell. The two most distinctive features of the Grand Prix are the numbers of beautifully dressed women who mix quietly with the men around the booths at which the mutuals are sold, and the fact that every one speaks English, either because that is his native tongue, or because, if he be a Frenchman, he finds so many English terms in his racing vocabulary that it is easier for him to talk entirely in that tongue than to change from French to English three or four times in each sentence.

But the most curious, and in a way the most interesting feature of the Grand Prix day, is the queer accompaniment to which the races are run. It never ceases or slackens, or lowers its sharp monotone. It comes from the machines which stamp the tickets bought in the mutual pools. If you can imagine a hundred ticket-collectors on an elevated railroad station all chopping tickets at the same time, and continuing at this uninterruptedly for five hours, you can obtain an idea of the sound of this accompaniment. It is not a question of cancelling a five-cent railroad ticket with these little instruments. It is the same to them whether they clip for the girl who wagers a louis on the favorite for a place, and who stands to win two francs, or for the English plunger who has shoved twenty thousand francs under the wire, and who has only the little yellow and red ticket which one of the machines has so nonchalantly punched to show for his money. People may neglect the horses for luncheon, or press over the rail to see them rush past, or gather to watch the President of the Republic enter to a solemn fanfare of trumpets between lines of soldiers, but there are always a few left to feed these little machines, and their clicking goes on through the whole of the hot, dusty day, like the clipping of the shears of Atropos.

The Grand Prix is the only race at which you are generally sure to win money. You can do this by simply betting against the English horse. The English horse is generally the favorite, and of late years the French horse-owners have been so loath to see the blue ribbon of the French turf go to perfidious Albion that their patriotism sometimes overpowers their love of fair play. If the English horse is not only the favorite, but also happens to belong to the stable of Baron Hirsch, you have a combination that apparently can never win on French soil, and you can make your bets accordingly. When Matchbox walked on to the track last year, he was escorted by eight gendarmes, seven detectives in plain clothes, his two trainers, and the jockey, and it was not until he was well out in the middle of the track that this body-guard deserted him. Possibly if they had been allowed to follow him round the course on bicycles he might have won, and no combination of French jockeys could have ridden him into the rail, or held Cannon back by a pressure of one knee in front of another, or driven him to making such excursions into unknown territory to avoid these very things that the horse had little strength left for the finish.

But perhaps the French horse was the better one, after all, and it was certainly worth the loss of a few francs to see the Frenchmen rejoice over their victory. To their minds, such a defeat of the English on the field of Longchamps went far to wipe away the memory of that other victory on the field near Brussels.

Grand Prix night is a fête-night in Paris--that is, in the Paris of the Boulevards and the Champs Élysées--and if you wish to dine well before ten o'clock, you should engage your table for that night several days in advance.

You have seen people during Horse Show week in New York waiting in the hall at Delmonico's for a table for a half-hour at a time, but on Grand Prix night you will see hundreds of hungry men standing outside of the open-air restaurants in the Champs Élysées, or wandering disconsolately under the trees from the crowded tables of l'Horloge across the Avenue to those of the Ambassadeurs', and from them to the Alcazar d'Été, and so on to Laurent's and the Café d'Orient. Every one apparently is dining out-of-doors on that night, and the white tables, with their little lamps, and with bottles of red wine flickering in their light, stretch under the trees from the Place de la Concorde up to the Avenue Matignon. There are splashing fountains between them and bands of music, and the voices of the singers in the cafés chantants sound shrilly above the chorus of rattling china and of hundreds of people talking and laughing, and the never-ceasing undertone of the cabs rolling by on the great Avenue, with their lamps approaching and disappearing in the night like thousands of giant fire-flies. You are sure to dine well in such surroundings, and especially so after the great race--for the reason that if your friends have won, they command a good dinner to celebrate the fact; or should they have lost, they design a better one in order to help them forget their ill-fortune.

The spirit of adventure and excitement that has been growing and feeding upon itself throughout the day of the Grand Prix reaches its climax after the dinner hour, and finds an outlet among the trees and Chinese lanterns of the Jardin de Paris. There you will see all Paris. It is the crest of the highest wave of pleasure that rears itself and breaks there.

You will see on that night, and only on that night, all of the most celebrated women of Paris racing with linked arms about the asphalt pavement which circles around the band-stand. It is for them their one night of freedom in public, when they are permitted to conduct themselves as do their less prosperous sisters, when, instead of reclining in a victoria in the Bois, with eyes demurely fixed ahead of them, they can throw off restraint and mix with all the men of Paris, and show their diamonds, and romp and dance and chaff and laugh as they did when they were not so famous. The French swells who are their escorts have cut down Chinese lanterns with their sticks, and stuck the candles inside of them on the top of their high hats with the burning tallow, and made living torches of themselves. So on they go, racing by--first a youth in evening dress, dripping with candle-grease, and then a beautiful girl in a dinner gown, with her silk and velvet opera cloak slipping from her shoulders--all singing to the music of the band, sweeping the people before them, or closing in a circle around some stately dignitary, and waltzing furiously past him to prevent his escape. Sometimes one party will storm the band-stand and seize the musicians' instruments, while another invades the stage of the little theatre, or overpowers the women in charge of the shooting-gallery, or institutes a hurdle-race over the iron tables and the wicker chairs.

Or you will see ambassadors and men of title from the Jockey Club jostling cockney bookmakers and English lords to look at a little girl in a linen blouse and a flat straw hat, who is dancing in the same circle of shining shirt-fronts _vis-à-vis_ to the most-talked-of young person in Paris, who wears diamonds in ropes, and who rode herself into notoriety by winning a steeplechase against a field of French officers. The first is a hired dancer, who will kick off some gentleman's hat when she wants it, and pass it round for money, and the other is the companion of princes, and has probably never been permitted to enter the Jardin de Paris before; but they are both of the same class, and when the music stops for a moment they approach each other smiling, each on her guard against possible condescension or familiarity; and the hired dancer, who is as famous in her way as the young girl with the ropes of diamonds is in hers, compliments madame on her dancing, and madame calls the other "mademoiselle," and says, "How very warm it is!" and the circle of men around them, who are leaning on each other's shoulders and standing on benches and tables to look, smile delightedly at the spectacle. They consider it very _chic_, this combination. It is like a meeting between Madame Bernhardt and Yvette Guilbert.

But the climax of the night was reached last year when the band of a hundred pieces struck buoyantly into that most reckless and impudent of marches and comic songs, "The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo." The cymbals clashed, and the big drums emphasized the high notes, and the brass blared out boastfully with a confidence and swagger that showed how sure the musicians were of pleasing that particular audience with that particular tune. And they were not disappointed. The three thousand men and women hailed the first bars of the song with a yell of recognition, and then dancing and strutting to the rhythm of the tune, and singing and shouting it in French and English, they raised their voices in such a chorus that they could be heard defiantly proclaiming who they were and what they had done as far as the boulevards. And when they reached the high note in the chorus, the musicians, carried away by the fever of the crowd, jumped upon the chairs, and held their instruments as high above their heads as they could without losing control of that note, and every one stood on tiptoe, and many on one foot, all holding on to that highest note as long as their breath lasted. It was a triumphant, reckless yell of defiance and delight; it was the war-cry of that class of Parisians of which one always reads and which one sees so seldom, which comes to the surface only at unusual intervals, and which, when it does appear, lives up to its reputation, and does not disappoint you.

* * * * *

It happened a short time ago, when I was in Paris, that the ranks of those members of the Institute of France who are known as the Forty Immortals were incomplete, one of the Forty having but lately died. I do not now recall the name of this Immortal, which is not, I trust, an evidence of ignorance on my part so much as it is an illustration of the circumstance that when men choose to make sure of immortality while they are alive, in preference to waiting for it after death, they are apt to be considered, when they cease to live, as having had their share, and the world closes its account with them, and opens up one with some less impatient individual. It is only a matter of choice, and suggests that one cannot have one's cake and eat it too. And so, while we can but envy François Coppée in his green coat and his laurel wreath of the Immortals of France, we may remember the other sort of immortality that came to François Villon and François Millet, who were not members of the Institute, and whose coats were very ragged indeed. I do, however, remember the name of the gentleman who was elected to fill the vacancy in the ranks of the Forty, and in telling how he and other living men take on the robe of immortality I hope to report the proceedings of one of the most interesting functions of the French capital. He was the Vicomte de Bornier, and his name was especially impressed upon me by a paragraph which appeared in the _Figaro_ on the day following his admittance to the Academy.

"M. Manel," the paragraph read, "the well-known journalist, has renounced his candidacy for the vacant chair among the Forty Immortals. M. Manel will be well remembered by Parisians as the author who has written so much and so charmingly under the _nom de plume_ of 'Le Vicomte de Bornier.'" Whether this was or was not fair to the gentleman I had seen so highly honored I do not know, but it was calculated to make him a literary light of interest.

You are told in Paris that the title of Academician is the only one remaining under the republic which counts for anything; and, on the other hand, you hear the Academy called a pleasant club for old gentlemen, to which new members are elected not for any great work which they are doing in the world, but because their point of view is congenial to those who are already members. All that can be said against the Academy by a Frenchman has been printed by Alphonse Daudet in _The Immortals_. In that novel he charges that the Academy numbs the style of whosoever wears its green livery; he says that he who enters its door leaves originality behind, that he grows conservative and self-conscious, and that whatever freshness of thought or literary method may have been his before his admittance to its venerable portals is chilled by the severe classicism of his thirty-nine brethren.

This may or may not be true of some of the members, but it certainly cannot be true of all, as many of them were never distinguished as authors, but were elected, as were De Lesseps and Pasteur, for discoveries and research in science, medicine, or engineering.

Nor is it true of M. Paul Bourget, who is the last distinguished Frenchman to be received into the ranks of the Immortals. The same observations which he made to me while in this country, and when he was not an Academician, upon Americans and American institutions, he has repeated, since his accession to the rank of an Immortal, in _Outre Mer_. And the freedom with which he has spoken shows that the shadow of the palm-trees has not clouded his cosmopolitan point of view, nor the classicism of the Academy dulled his wonderful powers of analysis. In his election, representing as he does the most brilliant of the younger and progressive school of French writers, the Academy has not so much honored the man as the man has honored the Academy.

M. Daudet's opinion, however, is interesting as being that of one of the most distinguished of French writers, and it is a satire which costs something, for it shuts off M. Daudet forever from hope of election to the body at which he scoffs, and at the same time robs him of the possibility of ever enjoying the added money value which attaches to each book that bears the leaves of the Academy on its title-page. Since the days of Richelieu, Frenchmen have mocked at this institution, and Frenchmen have given up years of their lives in working, scheming, and praying to be admitted to its councils, and died disappointed, and bitterly cursing it in their hearts. We have on the one hand the familiar story of Alexis Piron, who had engraved on his tombstone,

"_Ci-gît Piron, qui ne fut rien,
Pas même Académicien._"

And on the other there is the present picture of M. Zola knocking year after year at its portals, asking men in many ways his inferior to permit him a right to sit beside them. If you look over its lists from 1635 to the present day you will find as many great names among its members as those which are missing from its rolls; so that proves nothing.

No ridicule can disestablish the importance of the work done by the Academy in keeping the French language pure, or the value of its Dictionary, or the incentive which it gives to good work by examining and reporting from time to time on literary, scientific, and historical works.

A short time ago the anarchists of Paris determined to actively ridicule the Académie Française by putting forth a foolish person, Citizen Achille Le Roy, as a candidate for its honors. As a preliminary to election to the Academy a candidate must call upon all of its members. It is a formality which may be considered somewhat humiliating, as it suggests begging from door to door, hat in hand; but Citizen Le Roy made his round of visits in triumphal state, dressed in the cast-off uniform of a Bolivian general, and accompanied by a band of music and a wagonette full of journalists. Wherever he was not received he deposited an imitation bomb at the door of the member who had refused to see him, either as a warning or as a joke, and much to the alarm of the servants who opened the door. He concluded his journey, which extended over several days, by being photographed outside of the door of the Institute, which was, of course, the only side of the door which he will ever see.

The Institute of France stands beyond the bridges, facing the Seine. It is a most impressive and ancient pile, built around a great court, and guarded by statues in bronze and stone of the men who have been admitted to its gates. The ceremony of receiving a new member takes place in one end of this quadrangle of stone, in a little round hall, not so large as the auditorium of a New York theatre, and built like a dissecting-room, with three rows of low-hanging stone balconies circling the entire circumference of its walls. One part of the lowest balcony is divided into two large boxes, with a high desk between them, and a flight of steps leading down from it into the pit, which is packed close with benches. In one of these boxes sit some members of the Institute, and in the other the members of the Académie Française, which is only one, though the best known, of the five branches into which the Institute is divided. Behind the high desk sits the President, or, as he is called, the Secrétaire Perpétuel, of the Academy, with a member on either side. It is the duty of one of these to read the address of welcome to the incoming mortal.

It is a very pretty sight and a most important function in the social world, and as there are no reserved places, the invited ones come as early as eight o'clock in the morning to secure a good place, although the brief exercises do not begin until two o'clock in the afternoon. At that hour the street outside is lined with long rows of carriages, guarded by the smartest of English coachmen, and emblazoned with the oldest of French coats-of-arms. In the court-yard there is a fluttering group of pretty women in wonderful toilets, surrounding a few distinguished-looking men with ribbons in their coats, and encircled by a ring of journalists making notes of the costumes and taking down the names of the social celebrities. A double row of soldiers--for the Institute is part of the state--lines the main hall leading to the chamber, and salutes all who pass, whether men or women.

I was so unfortunate as to arrive very late, but as I came in with the American ambassador I secured a very good place, although a most awkwardly conspicuous one. Three old gentlemen in silk knickerbockers and gold chains bowed the ambassador down the hall between the soldiers, and out on to the steps which lead from the desk between the boxes in which sat the Immortals. There they placed two little camp-stools about eight inches high, on which they begged us to be seated. There was not another square foot of space in the entire chamber which was not occupied, so we dropped down upon the camp-stools. We were as conspicuous as you would be if you seated yourself on top of the prompter's box on the stage of the Grand Opera-house, and I felt exactly, after the audience had examined us at their leisure, as though the Secretary was about to suddenly rap on his desk and auction me off for whatever he could get. Still, we sat among the Immortals, if only for an hour, and that was something. The venerable Secretary peered over his desk, and the other Immortals gazed with polite curiosity, for the ambassador had only just arrived in Paris, and was not yet known.

The gentleman on the right of the Secretary was François Coppée, a very handsome man, with a strong, kind face, smoothly shaven, and suggesting a priest or a tragic actor. He wore the uniform of the Academy, which Napoleon spent much time in devising. It consists of a coat of dark green, bordered with palm leaves in a lighter green silk; there are, too, a high standing collar and a white waistcoat and a pearl-handled sword. The poet also wore a great many decorations, and smiled kindly upon Mr. Eustis and myself, with apparently great amusement. On the other side of the President, back of Mr. Eustis, was Comte d'Haussonville; he is a tall man with a Vandyck beard, and it was he who was to read the address of welcome to the Vicomte de Bornier.