Chapter III: Letter II

Paris--Street Cries--St. Roch--The Boulevards--Parisian
Lodgings--Manner of Living--The Grand Opera--Taglioni--The Public
Gardens--The Guinguettes--Dancing, the characteristic amusement of
the French--Sunday Dances--Dancing defended, from classical
authority.

_Paris, July 4th, 1835._

When one has travelled all night in a French diligence in the dog-days, and is set down next morning in the “_Place Notre Dame des Victoires_,” three thousand miles from one’s home--oh dear! one has much less pleasure in the aspect of the great city than one expected. _Voilà Paris!_ said the “conducteur,” announcing our approach; each one half opening his eyes, and then closing them suddenly. Four gentlemen and two ladies in a diligence, bobbing their heads at each other about six of the morning; the hour in which sleep creeps so agreeably upon one’s senses, is an interesting spectacle. It was cruel to be interrupted in so tender an interview. _Voilà Paris!_ was echoed a second time, so we awoke and looked out, except a lady, who reposed gently upon my left shoulder, who had seen Paris a thousand times, and had never slept with four gentlemen perhaps in her life. She lay still, I attentive not to awake her, until the ill-omened raven croaked a third time, _Paris!_ A French gentleman now did the honours of the city to us strangers. “That, sir, is the ‘Invalids;’ see how the morning rays glitter from its gilded dome. And this, which peers so proudly over the Barrière de l’Etoile, is the grand Triumphal Arch of Napoleon;” and he read over the trophies--Marengo! Jena! Austerlitz! praised the sculpture and bas reliefs, and burst out into a great many tropes about French victories. We now passed down through the _Champs Elysees_, rolled along the beautiful _Rue Rivoli_, and arrived fast asleep upon the _Place Notre Dame des Victoires_. I advise you to sleep at St. Germains, where the steamboat will leave you, and come to Paris next morning with the imagination fresh for the enjoyment. To be wide awake improves wonderfully one’s capacity for admiration.

I stood and looked about, and I felt the spirit of manhood die away within me; and every other spirit, even curiosity. I would rather have seen one of your haycocks than the queen. But, fortunately, here is no time for reflection. You are immediately surrounded by a score of individuals, who greet you with hats in their hands and with great officiousness, offering you all at once their services. Some are exceedingly anxious you should lodge in their hotels: _La plus jolie location de tout Paris--des chambres de toute beauté!_ and others are dying to carry your luggage; others again are eager to sell you their wares, and thrust a bit of soap, or a cane, or a pair of spectacles, in your face suddenly. I mistook this for an attempt at assassination. Next, I had to bow to my toes for a lodging. With the address of three hotels, a mile apart, I had to pick one out of the street. I advise you not to run about town till your porter’s charges are of greater amount than the value of your luggage, but to put yourself and your trunks in a hack, and you will have at least a ride for your money; besides, the driver is limited in his charges, and the porter is _à discretion_, and discretion is one of the dearest of the French virtues.

Who do you think I had for a fellow traveller? Your old acquaintance ---- ----, who has lost his wife, and travels to dissipate his grief. He has not left off saying good things. He remarked that it was a bad day to go into Paris--the 4th of July; there would be such a crowd. Recollecting with what jubilee we celebrate this day at New York, he imagined how much greater must be the confusion at Paris. He feared we should have our brains knocked out by the mob. You can’t think what an advantage it is for one having but little of this commodity of brains, to travel into foreign countries; one grows into the reputation of a wit by not being understood. I do not mean to be arrogant in saying I am better versed, at least in our foreign relations, than my companion, and yet I was noticed on the way only as being of his suite, which I ascribe entirely to my capacity to express myself in a known tongue. As he did not speak French, I was mistaken for the interpreter to some foreign ambassador.

Paris is a wilderness of tall, scraggy, and dingy houses, of irregular heights and sizes, starting out impudently into the street, or retiring modestly, and without symmetry, a palace often the counterpart of a pig-sty, and a cathedral next neighbour to a hen-roost. The streets run zig-zag, and abut against each other as if they did not know which way to run. They are paved with cubical stones of eight and ten inches, convex on the upper surface like the shell of a terrapin; few have room for side-walks, and where not bounded by stores, they are dark as they were under king Pepin. Some of them seem to be water-tight. St. Anne, my first acquaintance, is yet clammy with mud after a week’s drought, and early in the morning when she gets up, she is filthy to a degree that is indecent. The etymology of Paris is mud; the etymology of the Bourbons is mud, and mud to the last note of time will be, Paris and the Bourbons.

As for the noise of the streets, I need not attempt to describe it. What idea can ears, used only to the ordinary and human noises, conceive of this unceasing racket--this rattling of the cabs and other vehicles over the rough stones, this rumbling of the omnibusses. For the street cries--one might have relief from them by a file and hand-saw. First the _prima donna_ of the fish-market opens the morning: _Carpes toutes fraiches; voilà des carpes!_ And then stand out of the way for the glazier: _Au vitrière!_ quavering down the chromatic to the lowest flat upon the scale. Next the ironmonger, with his rasps, and files, and augers, which no human ears could withstand, but that his notes are happily mellowed by the seller of old clothes, _Marchand de drap!_ in a monotone so low and spondaic, and so loud, as to make Lablache die of envy. About nine is full chorus, headed by the old women and their proclamations: _Horrible attentat contre la vie du roi Louis Philippe--et la petite chienne de Madame la Marquise--égarée à dix heures--L’Archevèque de Paris--Le Sieur Lacenaire--Louis Philippe, le Procès monstre--et tout cela pour quatre sous!_ being set loose all at the same time, tuned to different keys. All things of this earth seek, at one time or another, repose--all but the noise of Paris. The waves of the sea are sometimes still, but the chaos of these streets is perpetual from generation to generation; it is the noise that never dies. Many new comers have been its victims. In time, however--such is the complaisance of human nature--we become reconciled even to this never-ending hubbub. It becomes even necessary, it is said, to one’s comforts. There are persons here who get a night-mare in a place of tranquillity, and can sleep only upon the Boulevards.

Paris and I, are yet on ceremonious terms. I venture upon her acquaintance as one who walks upon ice; it is the boy’s first lesson of skating. I am not much versed in towns any way; and this one is ahead of my experience. In my case, one is ignorant and afraid to ask information. I did venture this morning to ask what General that was--a fat, decent-looking gentleman, in silk stockings, and accoutred in regimentals? That General, sir, is Prince Talleyrand’s lacquey. Soon after, I inquired what house was that barn of a place? That house, sir, is the Louvre. So I must feel the ground under me. Yesterday, being Sunday, (which I found out by the almanac,) I went to St. Roch’s. I had the luck to hit upon the fashionable church; but the preacher was the god of dulness. The world, he says, is growing worse and worse; our roguish ancestors begot us bigger rogues, about to produce a worse set of rogues than ourselves. “The antichrist is already come.” If he had said the antichrist of wit, anybody would have believed him; and yet this is the very pulpit from which the Bossuets and Bourdaloues used to preach. The church was filled almost entirely with women. One might think that none go to heaven in this country but the fair sex. The worshippers seem intent enough upon their devotions; but the wide avenues at the sides are filled with a crowd of idle, curious, and disorderly spectators. Give me a French church: one walks in here booted and spurred, looks at the pretty women and the pictures, whistles a tune if one chooses, and then walks out again. They have not spoilt the architectural beauty of St. Roch’s by pews and galleries. The walls are adorned splendidly with paintings; and here and there are groups of statuary; and the altar, being finely gilt and illuminated, looks magnificently. When I build a church I will decorate it somewhat in this manner. It is good to imitate nature as much as one can, in all things; and she has set us the example in this. She has adorned her great temple, the world, with green fields and fragrant flowers, and its superb dome, the firmament, with stars. I walked into the Tuileries after church, where I saw a great number of naked statues and pretty women. The pretty women were not naked. I sat down awhile by the goddess of wisdom. And this is the sum of my adventures.

Oh, no! I ventured also a walk last night upon the Boulevards, about twilight. How adorable is the Madelaine! While staring at this church, (for staring is the only expression of countenance one pretends to, the first week in Paris,) a little girl--but not a little graceful and pretty--presented me a bouquet. But, my dear, I have no change. “_Mais, qu’est ce que cela fait?_” and she turned it about with her taper fingers, and fixed it and unfixed it, though there were but two leaves and a rosebud, and then arranged it in a buttonhole, shewing all the while her pearly teeth and laughing black eyes. She had the finesse to gain admiration for her charms without seeming to court it. We now walked on a few steps, when we met other women, of a richer attire, and of very easy, unembarrassed manners, who also said very obliging things to us, walking along side.

There is a kind of men in New England who cannot be beaten out of the dignity of a walk, who would rather die than be seen running, which is perhaps the reason they won the battle of Bunker’s Hill. Now, if you would represent to yourself something very comical, you must imagine my companion, straight-laced in his gravity, escorted by one of these sultanas of the Boulevards, all betawdried, and rustling in her silks--_Mon petit cœur!--Mon petit ami!--Venez donc!_ At last, turning suddenly upon her with a look and air of menace and expostulation, he invoked her in a most solemn manner to depart; though she understood not a word of the exorcism, she obeyed instantly, the gesture and tone being significant enough, and she went off as evil spirits do usually in such cases, murmuring, “_Pourquoi me tenir donc à causer, ce diable d’homme? il m’a fait perdre au moins deux messieurs._”

We now descended by the _Rue St. Anne_ towards our lodgings, talking as we went to prevent thinking; for we are both very tender-hearted so far from home--he of his Yankee wife, how industrious, how economical, and how she has resigned all the intercourse and pleasures of the world to teach the little children their catechism and their astronomy; and I, of our dear little wives of Schuylkill, so amiable, so cheerful, tempering their duties with amusements, and not forgetting the claims of society--when suddenly we observed, in a dark corner, reached only by a few rays of a distant lamp, a queer old woman, seated, her knees and chin together, and rocking herself on a chair. She rose up in the face of my companion, who knows not a word of French, with an immense gabble: “_Des demoiselles très distinguées!--jolies comme des anges!_” and instantly we were hemmed round with a fluttering troop of the angels; but we escaped into the _Hotel des Ambassadeurs_, and locked our doors for the night. Please direct your letters to this house, No. 64, _Rue St. Anne_.

* * * * *

_Hotel des Ambassadeurs, July 6th, 1835._

I must tell you how one lodges in Paris. A hotel is a huge edifice, mostly in the form of a parallelogram, and built around a paved courtyard, which serves as a landing for carriages as well as for persons on foot, and leads up to the apartments by one or more staircases. In the centre of the front wall, is a wide door (a _porte cochère_) opening from the street, and just inside a lodge (a _concièrge_) and a porter, who watches night and day over the concerns of the establishment. This porter is an important individual, and holds about the same place in a Paris hotel, that Cerberus holds--(I leave you a place for the rhyme.) He is usually a great rogue, a spy of the government, and a shoemaker; he cobbles the holes he makes in your boots, while his wife darns those she makes in your stockings. He is always a bad enemy and a useful friend, and you purchase his good will by money and condescensions, as a first minister’s. He lets you rooms, he attends them, receives parcels, letters, messages, runs errands, answers your visits, and fines you a shilling if you stay out after twelve; and his relation with many lodgers enables him to give you these services, I am ashamed to tell you how cheap. By proper attentions also to his wife, there will come to your bed every morning, at the hour you appoint, a cup of coffee or tea, and the entertainment of the lady’s conversation while you sip it. Each story of a hotel is divided into apartments and rooms--that is, accommodations for whole families or individuals; distinction, and, of course, price, decreasing upwards; for example, he who lives a story lower down thinks himself above you, and you in return consider him overhead below you. A third story in the Rue Castiglione or Rivoli, is equal in rank to a second story anywhere else.

The porter’s lodge is a little niche, about eight feet square. It pays no rent, but receives a salary, usually of sixty dollars a year, from the proprietor. Our porter is a man of several talents. He tunes pianos for ten sous, and plays at the “Petit Lazare” of a night for two francs. Indeed, his whole family plays; his grandmother plays the “Mother of the Gracchi.” He takes care, too, of his wife’s father; but he dresses him up as a Pair de France, or a Doge, and makes a good deal out of him also. Besides, he has a dog which he expects soon to play the “_Chien de Montargis_,” he is studying; and a magpie, which plays already in the “_Pie Voleuse_.” It is by these several industries that he is enabled to clean my boots once a day, take care of my room, and do all the domestic services required by a bachelor, at six francs a month; and he has grown into good circumstances. But, alas! impartial fate knocks at the Porter’s Lodge, as at the gates of the Louvre. He had an only son, who, in playing Collin last winter--a shepherd’s part in a vaudeville--had to wear a pair of white muslin breeches in the middle of the inclement season, and he took cold, and died of a _fluxion de poitrine_! The mother wept in telling this story; and then some one coming in, she smiled.

One is usually a little shy of these hotels at first sight, especially if one comes from the Broad Mountain. You take hold of an unwieldy knocker, you lift it up cautiously, and open flies the door six inches; you then push yourself through, and look about with a kind of a suspicious and sheepish look, and you see no one. At length you discover an individual, who will not seem to take the least notice of you till you intrude rather far;--then he will accost you: _Que demandez-vous, Monsieur?_--I wish to see Mr. Smith? _Monsieur?--Monsieur, il ne demeure pas ici.--Que tu es bête!_ exclaims the wife, _c’est Monsieur_ Smit. _Oui, oui, oui--au quatrième, Monsieur, au dessus de l’entresol_; and with this information, of which you understand not a syllable, you proceed up stairs, and there you ring all the bells to the garret; but no one knows Mr. Smith. Why don’t you say _Mr. Smit_?

The houses here are by no means simple and uniform, as with us. The American houses are built, as ladies are dressed, all one way. First there is a pair of rival saloons, which give themselves the air of parlours: and then there is a dining room, and corresponding chambers above to the third or fourth story; and an entry runs through the middle or alongside a mile or two without stopping, at the farthest end of which is the kitchen; so that one always stands upon the marble of the front door in December, until Kitty has travelled this distance to let one in. How many dinners have I seen frozen in their own sauces, how many lovers chilled, by this refrigeratory process? Here, if you just look at the knocker, the door, as if by some invisible hand, flies open; and when you descend, if you say “Cordon,” just as Ali Baba said “Sesame,” the door opens, and delivers you to the street. The houses, too, have private rooms, and secret doors, and intricate passages; and one can never be said to be at home in one’s own house. I should like to see any one find the way to a lady’s boudoir. A thief designing to rob, has to study beforehand the topography of each house, without which, he can no more unravel it than the Apocalypse. There are closets, too, and doors, in many of the rooms, unseen by the naked eye. If a gentleman is likely to be intruded on by the bailiff, he sinks into the earth; and a lady, if surprised in her dishabille, or any such emergency, just disappears into the wall.

No private dwellings are known in Paris. A style, which gives entire families and individuals, at a price that would procure them very mean separate lodgings, the air of living in a great castle; and they escape by it all that emulation about houses, and door servants, and street display, which brings so much fuss and expense in our cities. I have seen houses a little straitened that were obliged to give Cæsar a coat to go to the door, another to bring in dinner, and another to curry the horses. To climb up to the second or third story is, to be sure, inconvenient; but once there, your climbing ends. Parlours, bedrooms, kitchen, and all the rest, are on the same level. In America, you have the dinner in the cellar, and the cook in the garret; and nothing but ups and downs the whole day. Moreover, climbing is a disposition of our nature. “In our proper motion we ascend.” See with what avidity we climb when we are boys; and we climb when we are old, because it reminds us of our boyhood. I have no doubt that the daily habit of climbing, too, has a good moral influence; it gives one dispositions to rise in the world. I ought to remark here, that persons in honest circumstances do not have kitchens in their own houses.

It is in favour of the French style not a little, that it improves the quality at least of one class of lodgers. Mean houses degrade men’s habits, and lower their opinions of living. As for me, I like this Paris way, but I don’t know why. I like to see myself under the same roof with my neighbours. One of them is a pretty woman, with the prettiest little foot imaginable; and only think of meeting this little foot, with which one has no personal acquaintance, three or four times a-day on the staircase! Indeed, the solitude of a private dwelling begins to seem quite distressing. To be always with people one knows! it paralyzes activity, breeds selfishness, and other disagreeable qualities. Solitary life has its vices, too, as well as any other.

On the other hand, a community of living expands one’s benevolent affections, begets hospitality, mutual forbearance, politeness, respect for public opinion, and keeps cross husbands from beating their wives, and _vice versa_. If Xantippe had lived in a French hotel, she would not have kept throwing things out of the window upon her husband’s head. The domestic virtues are, to be sure, well enough in their way; but they are dull, and unless kept in countenance by good company, they go too soon to bed. Indeed, that word “home,” so sacred in the mouths of Englishmen, often means little else than dozing in an arm-chair, listening to the squeaking of children, or dying of the vapours; at all events, the English are the people of the world most inclined to leave these sanctities of home. Here they are by hundreds, running in quest of happiness all about Europe.

But to return. My object, in setting out, was to shew you, as nearly as possible, my manner of living in the street of St. Anne. I have a _chambre de garçon au second_; this means, a bachelor’s room in the third story. As companions, I have General Kellerman, and a naked Mars over the chimney (not Mademoiselle), and a little Bonaparte about three inches long; and on a round table, with a marble cover, there is an old Rabelais and a Seneca’s Maxims, with manuscript notes on the margin, and a Bible open at Jeremiah. The floor is a kind of brick pavement, upon which a servant performs a series of rubbings, every morning, with a brush attached to his right foot, which gives it a slippery and mahogany surface. We have a livery stable also in the yard, and several persons lodge here for the benefit of the smell, it being good against consumption. Of the staircase I say nothing now, as I intend some day to write a treatise upon French Staircases. This one has not been washed ever, unless by some accident, such as Noah’s flood. Indeed, the less one says of French cleanliness in the way of houses the better. Our landlady appears no more delighted with a clean floor than an antiquary would be with a scoured shield; and there is none of the middling hotels of Paris that presumes to be better than this. I ought to remark here, that servants do not run about from one garret to another as they do in America. A French servant is transmitted to posterity. Our coachman says he has been in this family several hundred years.

When one cannot travel in the highway of life with a fashionable equipage, it is pleasant to steal along its secret path unnoticed. A great man is so jostled by the throng that either he cannot think at all, or, in gathering its silly admiration, so occupied with intrigues and mere personal vanities that the good qualities of his understanding are perverted, and he loses at length his taste for innocent enjoyments. But, travelling in this sober, unambitious way, one may gather flowers by the road side; one has leisure for the contemplation of useful and agreeable things; and is not obliged to follow absurd fashion, or keep up troublesome appearances; and one can get into low company when one pleases, without being suspected. Now I can wander “on my short-tailed nag” all over the country; I can get sometimes into a _coucou_ and ride out to St. Germains, or stroll unconcerned through the markets, and ask the price of fruits; of cassolettes, muscats, and jargonelles, and of grapes; and I can eat a bunch or two upon the pavement, just fresh from Fontainbleau; and do a great many innocent things which persons of distinction dare not do. This is the life of those who lodge at the _Hotel des Ambassadeurs_.

Here are two sheets filled, with what meagre events! and how much below the dignity of history! I console myself that trifles, like domestic anecdotes, are often the most characteristic. I will be your Boswell to the city of Paris. But Boswell had to retail the sense of an individual, and I the nonsense of the multitude, and my own. However, I wish these letters to be preserved from the flames, if you can, frivolous as they are; I have partly a design to manufacture some sort of a book out of them on my return home. I intend them as notes upon the field of battle--like Cæsar’s Commentaries, with the exception of the wit.

_July 7th._

I went with my Yankee companion last night to the Grand Opera; and, at the risk of being enormously long, I am going to add a postscript; for it is a wet day, and I have no better way to beguile the lazy twenty-four hours. They admit the spectators to a French theatre in files of two between high railings, and under the grim and bearded authority of the police, which prevents crowding and disorder; and whoever wishes to go in, not having a seat provided, “makes tail,” as they call it, by entering the file in the rear. A number of speculators also stand in the ranks at an early hour, and sell out their places at an advance to the more tardy, so that you have always this resort to obtain a good enough seat. In approaching the house, persons will offer you tickets, with great importunity, in the streets. With one of these, which, by cheapening a little, I got at double price, I procured admission to the pit.

_L’analyse de la Pièce; voilà le programme!_ These are two phrases--meaning only the analysis and bill of the play, at two sous--which you will hear croaked with the most obstreperous discord through the house, in the intervals of the performance, to bring out Monsieur Auber, and Scribe, and the Donnas. It is probably for the same reason the owls are permitted to sing in the night, to bring out the nightingales. The opera last night was “_Robert le Diable_,”--_voici l’analyse de la pièce_.

There was the representation of a grave-yard and a resurrection; and the ghosts, at least two hundred, flocked out of the ground in white frocks and silk stockings, and they squeaked and gibbered all over the stage. Then they asked one another out to dance, and performed the most fashionable ballets of their country, certainly in a manner very creditable to the other world. And while these waltzed and quadrilled, another set were entertaining themselves with elegant and fashionable amusements, some were turning summersets upon a new grave; others playing at whist upon a tombstone, and others again were jumping the rope over a winding-sheet; when suddenly, they all gave a screech and skulked into their graves; there was a flutter through the house, the music announcing some great event, and at length, amidst a burst of acclamations, Mademoiselle Taglioni stood upon the margin of the scene. She seemed to have alighted there from some other sphere.

I expected to be little pleased with this lady, I had heard such frequent praises of her accomplishments; but was disappointed. Her exceeding beauty surpasses the most excessive eulogy. Her dance is the whole rhetoric of pantomime; its movements, pauses, and attitudes, in their purest Attic simplicity, chastity, and urbanity. She has a power over the feelings which you will be unwilling to concede to her art. She will make your heart beat with joy; she will make you weep by the sole eloquence of her limbs. What inimitable grace! In all she attempts, you will love her, and best in that which she attempts last. If she stands still, you will wish her a statue that she may stand still always; or if she moves, you will wish her a wave of the sea that she may do nothing but--“move still, still so, and own no other function.” To me, she appeared last night to have filled up entirely the illusion of the play--to have shuffled off this gross and clumsy humanity, and to belong to some more airy and spiritual world.

But my companion, who is a professor, and a little ecclesiastical, and bred in that most undancing country, New England, was scandalized at the whole performance. He is of the old school, and has ancient notions of the stage, and does not approve this modern way of “holding the mirror up to nature.” He was displeased especially at the scantiness of the lady’s wardrobe. I was born farther south, and could better bear it.

The art of dressing, as I have read in the history of Holland and other places, has been carried often by the ladies to a blameable excess of quantity; so much so, that a great wit said in his day, a woman was “the least part of herself.” Taglioni’s sins, it is true, do not lie on this side of the category; she produced last evening nothing but herself--Mademoiselle Taglioni in the abstract. Ovid would not have complained of her. Her lower limbs wore a light silk, imitating nature with undistinguishable nicety; and her bosom a thin guaze, which just relieved the eye, as you have seen a fine fleecy cloud hang upon the dazzling sun. But there is no gentleman out of New England who would not have grieved to see her spoilt by villainous mantua-makers. She did not, moreover, exceed what the courtesy of nations has permitted, and what is necessary to the proper exhibition of her art.

They call this French opera, the “_Académie Royale de Musique_,” also, the “Français,” in contradistinction with the “Italien,” finally, the “Grand Opera;” this latter name because it has a greater quantity of thunder and lightning, of pasteboard seas, of paper snow-storms, and dragons that spit fire; also a gorgeousness of wardrobe and scenery not equalled upon any theatre in Europe. It is certain, its “_corps de ballet_” can outdance all the world put together.

Mercy! how deficient we are in our country in these elegant accomplishments. In many things we are still in our infancy,--in dancing we are not yet born. We have, it is true, our “_balancés_,” and “_chassés_,” and _back-to-backs_, and our women do throw a great deal of soul into their little feet--as on a “birth-night,” or an “Eighth of January,” or the like;--but the Grand Opera, the Opera Français, the Académie Royale de Musique! _ah, ma foi, c’est là une autre affaire!_--You have read, and so has everybody, of the “dancing Greeks;” of Thespis, so described by Herodotus, who used to dance on his head, his feet all the while dangling in the air; of the “Gaditanian girls,” so sung by Anacreon; of Hylas, who danced before Augustus; of the “dancing Dervishes,” who danced their religion like our Shakers; of the pantomimic dances, described by Raynal; and the Turkish Ulemas, by the “sweet Lady Mary Montague,” (quere “sweet?”) and finally, every one has heard of the “Age of Voltaire, the King of Prussia, and Vestris,”--well, all this is out-danced by Taglioni and the Grand Opera.

This opera has seats for two thousand spectators, besides an immense saloon (two hundred feet by fifty) where a great number of fashionables, to relieve their ears from the noise of the singing, promenade themselves magnificently during the whole evening, under the light of brilliant lustres; and where the walls, wainscotted with mirrors, multiply their numbers and charms to infinity.--May I not as well continue dancing through the rest of this page?

Dancing, you know, is a characteristic amusement of the French; and you may suppose they have accommodations to gratify their taste to its fullest extent. There are elegant rotundas for dancing in nearly all the public gardens, as at “Tivoli,” “Waxhal d’Eté,” and the “Chaumière de Mont Parnasse.” Besides, there are “Guinguettes” at every Barrière; and in the “Village Fêtes,” which endure the whole summer, dancing is the chief amusement; and public ball-rooms are distributed through every quarter of Paris, suited to every one’s rank and fortune. The best society of Paris go to the balls of Ranelagh, Auteuil, and St. Cloud. The theatres, too, are converted into ball-rooms, especially for the masquerades, from the beginning to the end of the Carnival.

I hired a cabriolet and driver the other night, and went with a lady from New Orleans to see the most famous of the “Guinguettes.” Here all the little world seemed to me completely and reasonably happy, behaving with all the decency, and dancing with almost the grace, of high life. We visited half a dozen, paying only ten sous at each for admission. I must not tell you it was Sunday night: it is so difficult to keep Sunday all alone, and without any one to help you. The clergy find a great deal of trouble to keep it themselves here, there is so little encouragement. On Sunday only, these places are seen to advantage. I am very far from approving of dancing on this day, if one can help it; but I have no doubt that in a city like Paris the dancers are more taken from the tavern and gin-shops than from the churches. I do not approve, either, of the absolute denunciation this elegant amusement incurs from many of our religious classes in America. If human virtues are put up at too high a price, no one will bid for them. Not a word is said against dancing in the Old or New Testament, and a great deal in favour. Miriam danced, you know how prettily; and David danced. To be sure, the manner of his dancing was not quite so commendable, according to the fashion of our climates. In the New Testament, to give enjoyment to the dance, the water was changed into wine. If you will accept classical authority I will give you pedantry _par dessus la tête_. The Greeks ascribed to dancing a celestial origin, and they admitted it even amongst the accomplishments and amusements of their divinities. The Graces are represented almost always in the attitude of dancing; and Apollo, the most amiable of the gods, and the god of wisdom, too, is called by Pindar the “dancer.” Indeed, I could shew you, if I pleased, that Jupiter himself sometimes took part in a cotillon, and on one occasion danced a gavot.

Mεστοισιν δ’ωρχειτο πατηρ ανδρωντε Θεωντε.

There, it is proved to you from an ancient Greek poet. I could shew you, too, that Epaminondas, amongst his rare qualities, is praised by Cornelius Nepos for his skill in dancing; and that Themistocles, in an evening party at Athens, passed for a clown, for refusing to take a share in a dance. But it is so foppish to quote Greek, and to be talking to women about the ancients. Don’t you say that dancing is not a natural inclination, or I will set all the savages on you of the Rocky Mountains, and I don’t know how many of the dumb animals--especially the bears, who, even on the South-Sea Islands, where they could not have any relations with the _Académie Royale de Musique_, yet always express their extreme joy (Captain Cook says) by this agreeable agitation of limbs. And if you won’t believe all this, I will take you to see a Negro holiday on the Mississippi. Now, this is enough about dancing; it is very late, and I must dance off to bed.

It is necessary to be as much in love with dancing as I am to preach so pedantically about it as I have in this postscript. Its enormous length, when you have seen Mademoiselle Taglioni, needs no apology. When you do see her, take care her legs don’t get into your head; they kept capering in mine all last night.