sacrificing themselves for its sake! Four old men with bald heads, and visages as impassive as plaster, sit round the table; and by them a young Italian, with long black hair, leans quietly on his elbows, and appears to seek those secret presentiments which whisper so fatally to the gambler, · Yes,'No.' Seven or eight spectators are standing silent, motionless, and attentive, as the mobs at the Place de Grève when the guillotine is about to fall on the neck of the victim. A tall, sour-looking man, in a threadbare coat, holding a card in one hand, a pin in another, pricks in rouge' or noir,' according to the turn of the card. This is your Tantalus of modern days--one of those who live upon the brink of all the pleasures of their time—this is a miser without a treasure, playing an imaginary stake; a sort of reasonable madman, who consoles himself for the misery of his fate by caressing a terrible chimera. “ Opposite the bank, one or two players, skilled in all the chances of the game, and like those thieves who are no longer frightened at the galleys, are come to make their three .coups, and to carry off immediately the probable winnings on which they live. An. old waiter walks nonchalantly up and down the room, his arms folded, and stops now and then at the window, as if to show to the passengers beneath the sign of the house.' The dealer, the banker, cast upon the players that sombre look which thrills the soul of the young gambler, and say with a hoarse voice, · Faites le jeu ! 6 a * As there are many things untranslatable, or which would seem ridiculous in the translation, I subjoin the original forcible and fantastical description : “ Entrez:-Quelle nudité! Les murs couverts de papier gros à hauteur d'homme, n'offrent pas un image qui puisse rafraîchir l'âme; pas même un clou pour faciliter le suicide. Le parquet est toujours malpropre. Une table ronde occupe le centre de la salle, et la simplicité des chaises de paille, pressées autour de ce tapis usé par l'or, annonce une curieuse indifférence au luxe chez ces hommes qui viennent périr là pour la fortune et pour le luxe... Trois vieillards, à têtes chauves sont nonchallamment assis autour du tapis vert. Leurs visages de plâtre impassibles, comme ceux des diplomates revèlent des âmes blasées, des cours qui depuis long-tems 99* Such are the scenes of the Palais Royal-such are the scenes of that fatal place, in which the vice and the villany, the industry and the arts, the force and the weakness; the power and the pleasure, the idle and voluptuous habits, the morbid and active spirit of our race--all that advances and instructs, and degrades and disgraces the age in which we live—are found side by side together. Must civilization be accompanied by its curses? ... The electricity which creates the thunder guides us to the pole; and the same terrible energy which disturbs the world has carried knowledge and religion over its deep and mysterious ways. avaient désappris de palpiter en envisageant même les biens paraphernaux d'une femme. Un jeune Italien aux cheveux noirs, au teint olivâtre, était accoudé tranquillement au bout de la table, et paraissait écouter ces pressentimens secrets qui crient fatalement à un joueur Oui Non-cette tête méridionale respirait l'or et le seu. Sept ou huit spectateurs debout, rangés de manière à former une galerie, attendaient les scènes que leur préparaient les coups du sort, les figures des acteurs, le mouvement de l'argent et des râteaux. Ces désouvrés étaient là, silencieux, immobiles, attentifs, comme est le peuple à la Grève quand le bourreau tranche une tête. Un grand homme sec en habit rapé tenait un registre d'une main, et de l'autre une épingle pour marquer les passes de la rouge ou de la noire. C'était un de ces Tantales modernes, qui vivent en marge de toutes les jouissances de leur siècle; un de ces avares sans trésor qui jouent en idée une mise imaginaire; espèce de fou raisonnable, se consolant de ses misères en caressant une épouvantable chimère-agissant enfin avec le vice et le danger comme les jeunes prêtres avec Dieu quand ils lui disent des messes blanches. "Puis, en face du banqué un ou deux de ces fins spéculateurs experts aux chances du jeu et semblables à d'anciens forçats qui ne s'effraient plus des galères, étaient venus là pour hasarder trois coups et emporter immédiatement le gain probable dont ils vivaient. Deux vieux garçons de salle se promenaient nonchalamment, les bras croisés, regardant aux carreaux par intervalles comme pour montrer aux passans leurs plates figures en guise d'enseigne. Le tailleur et le banquier venaient de jeter sur les positeurs ce regard blême qui les tue, et disaient d'une voix grêle.. FAITES LE JEU !! "--Balzac, Peau de Chagrin.-(I have translated into the present tense.)*. * See Appendix. THE QUAIS AND THE TUILERIES. Quais, irregularity-Diversity-Paris on a fine day a picture of modern civilization-Business, crowd-Different from the quays of the Thames—Powder-mill replaced by the Pantheon—Tuileries -Alterations—The arts should be as inviolable as the laws-Tuileries last refuge of the aristocracy-The population of the Tuileries -Remarkable as the birth of a new age-Description of that age -The Tuileries still represent it. THE four great features in the physiognomy of Paris are the Boulevards, the Palais Royal, the Tuileries, and the Quais. The Quais, though animated differently, are perhaps more animated than the Boulevards. Here again, too, you see the charm of variety and irregularity; what so irregular as those islands jutting out into the Seine, and mingling their low and dirty hovels with the splendid palaces of the Tuileries and the Louvre ?-what so irregular as that variety of roofs which, standing on any eminence, you behold rising everywhere around you, one above the other, roofs of all shapes, mansions and domes of all sizes ?-what so diversified as that mixture of boats and carriages, --of pavement and of water,--of masts and men--of washer-women and soldiers,-of stalls, temples, manufactories, and mausoleums ? Paris on a fine day, seen from one of the bridges, is a picture of modern civilization; brilliant, confused, gay, various; but the picture (and such is the colouring of our times) is a picture in water colours ; the shades, bright, are not deep; there is not the darkness and the force which we admire in the paintings of Rembrandt and Murillo : there is not the richness that a southern sun spreads around you ; but here, as elsewhere, there is a gayety that veils the northern nature of the clime. As the population of the Boulevards is the lounging a population of Paris, the population of the Quais is rife with Parisian business and activity : as the one breathes a certain ease, the other moves under the spirit of agitation; everybody here has something to do, something to sell, something to buy, somewhere to go; and behind this living wave, ebbing and flowing, --this moving mass of white caps, dark bonnets, red feathers, tattered hats, and gleaming casques --rises darkly the old city, and the stately Faubourg St. Germain. And there is Ste. Geneviève ! and there is Notre Dame! the tomb of Voltaire, and the monument of De Sully--uniting the present with the past,--the twelfth century with the eighteenth--the power of literature with the dominion of the church. One finds a happiness and a glow about the squalid river of the Seine which all our wealth and grandeur have not bestowed upon the magnificent Thames. The broad quays which ennoble the aspect of this ' miserable stream betray its poverty,--its poverty as the canal of commerce,--as the carrier and ministrant of that wealth which creates the magazine and fills the warehouse. But there is another wealth, another greatness: that greatness which arises from the cultivation of the arts, from the knowledge and the love of the beautiful'; a greatness which the traveller loves, and which the statesman should cherish ; a greatness which is the greatness of France, and before which you bow as you see the Louvre on the side of the coal-wharf, and find the powder-mill replaced by the Pantheon. And now look to the palace, which, according to the fable of the dervise, has been of late years a caravanserai for so many travellers ! to the palace where kings and water-carriers have so lately revelled !* A short time ** La chambre à coucher du roi était pleine de porteurs d'eau, qui se faisaient rebondir en riant sur le matelas de son lit."-Chron. de la Révolution de Juillet, 1830. Francis the First bought the Tuileries, then a house between court and garden, and in the neighbourhood of a spot where tiles (“ tuiles”) were manufactured for his mother; Catherine de Medicis purchased the buildings and the ground in the vicinity, and laid the foundations of a new edifice, which, if the original plans of Bullan and De Lorme since, and Paris was alarmed by a long line of scaffolding, behind which a conspiracy was supposed planned and executing against the liberties of the people. At length the plot was exposed; where we presumed ramparts we found a flower-garden: the monarchy this time merely exposed itself to the reproach of bad taste: “the charta insulted was the charta of le Nôtre ;” and the " chef-d'æuvre” of Philibert de Lorme, too, has been defaced, but not with impunity. The young man yonder, stretching out his hand with vehemence, and vociferating impetuously to his companion, and the old man there, with arms folded and shoulders uplifted, regard the filling up of that colonnade as something worse than a “ fournée" of peers, and declare that “ in France the arts should be as inviolable as the laws.” One peculiarity distinguishes these gardens, the last refuge of aristocratical pretensions, the people--the people without a hat and a coat--are forbidden to appear in them. A custom will always survive a constitution, and the same population that in the three days of July stormed the Tuileries in defiance of an army, retreated on the first of August before the solitary sentinel stationed at their gate. The population of the Tuileries varies naturally had been adopted, would have been even larger than the present one. But the pavilion in the middle and the light buildings on each side of it were all which formed at that time, and for many years afterward, the Château of the Tuileries. It was not till the reign of Louis XIV. that the Tuileries were completed by Leveau. Before this time the garden was separated from the palace by a street called “Rue des Tuileries.” This garden at that time contained a menagerie, an orangery, and a preserve of game for the royal "chasse." It was defended by a high wall, a moat, and a bastion. Le Nôtre changed all this, surrounding the garden with two terraces planted with trees, that one by the Seine and that one by the Rue de Rivoli , called from the old convent “Terrace des Feuillans.” Here ran the gardens of the “ Feuillans” and the "Capucins," and a long court which led to the old “manèges" of the Tuileries. On this royal and religious spot was erected the edifice which saw the destruction of the monarchy and the church,—the edifice in which sat the constitutional assembly, the legislative assembly, and the conventional assembly. Occupied by the Five Hundred during the Directory, it shared in the new changes, was destroyed with its masters, and afforded Bonaparte the space on which he built the Rue de Rivoli, |
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