Mashallah! A flight into Egypt

Front matter

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

[3o CtsJ

Appletons'

I. Parisian Days

Hotel du Mont Blanc, Rue de Seine, Paris. A light fall very of filmy snow lies like down in the two courts of the Grand Hotel du Mont Blanc. There is something laughable in the grandeur of this dingy old caravansary in the heart of the Latin Quarter- — it is so lacking in every element suggested by the name. It is true we have snow in the two courts, and the chambers, spite of the elegantly small French grates sunk away back in the chimney, are as cold as the crown of the great father of mountains ; but, beyond this, I don't see the appropriateness of the title as applied to our hotel. Your French fires are too polite to roar, and too expensive to make up in quantity what they lack in quality — at least on this side of the river.

We are all Bohemians together as far as your eyes can count the chimney-tops ; we glory in being ill paid for our works of undoubted genius ; in the sweat of our faces we do not, as a general thing, eat bread, though it is always at hand, done up in crisp rolls as big around as your arm and full seven feet long; we prefer taking the light, nameless dishes that are served us over the way by the faithful and obliging Theodore, and where we can, if we choose, leave "a promise to pay" on the proprietor's book, where it hangs till American stocks go up in the market. Autographs are worth something in the Latin Quarter, as almost any one of us can prove to you toward the end of the month. Students drift naturally into the Quarter, it is so classical and so cheap ; and very many of us seem to find the Mont Blanc our Ararat. The house is always filled with young fellows, mostly under five and twenty years of age, and the majority of these are Americans. I wonder how it is that we all chance to meet at one board as strangers, to grow fond, very fond of one another, to go out and come in together, and, at last, to part with some show of feeling (it is permissible in France), and with a sore heart that turns again and again to the old haunts, and asks itself ever the same question* " Shall we meet again as of yore, and sing the songs of the past, and agonize anew over the financial crisis that at times seemed to involve the entire community — yes, when even the young republic apparently quakes to its foundation and threatens to go to the dogs ? " Probably we never shall. We fully realize this, and at times, when the thought strikes us with fullest force, we drink deep potions of black coffee and cognac and smoke wildly against the day of our doom.

Mont Blanc, our castle, has an uninviting approach ; the long, dark passage leading from the street to the court is very like a carriage way ; the court is as ugly as a stable ; even the small image of the Madonna in her niche above the passage sheds no charitable glow over the place. Nor is the concierge calculated to increase the patronage of the house by reason of any charm either spiritual or material. She was built for a very thin little woman, whose perpetual virtue was insured by reason of her excessive plainness. Not satisfied with her lot, she has undergone some partial transformation, whether natural or artificial I know not, which leads the casual observer to suspect that she has been blown up with a goosequill until her eyes no longer focus ; and yet she impresses you as being thin. Her flesh is a delusion ; her eyes alone are beyond question — those fatal orbs keep watch on two sides of the court at once. She has knowledge of our most secret movements ; all our hope is in her charity and loving kindness. She it is who receives and distributes the welcome home letters ; the keys of our chambers hang in a row at her side, and with a glance of her weather eye she can call the roll of the house and detect at once the delinquents. She can, if she chooses, exile us from the world, comparatively, for she has only to tell inquiring friends that we are out, when we are in, impatiently awaiting their arrival, whereat they cast us off for ever as being no longer worthy to be called friend. Ah, these tyrannous, omnipresent, second-sighted concierges, the destinies of France lie in their grasp ! If I have been generous to this little woman in her sentry-box, she will direct you to my chamber ; I know this, and am therefore as generous as I can afford to be. My key is out, I am in ; concierge requests you to enter the second court and climb the stairs in the farther corner until you come to the roof — Boom No. 55 — this is my home.

In the Latin Quarter, the second court is even more uninviting than the first. It has the dejected air of a suppressed monastery. The walls are very high, and full of long French windows that are closely curtained, for we live so near together in the courts that it difficult to keep from prying into your neighbor's business. My stairs go round and round like a cork-screw ; on the first landing you will find a pair of gaiters, rather well worn. They are always there till noon, and I take it the proprietor of these gaiters, whoever he may be, has a comprehensive knowledge of Paris by gaslight. The second landing is scarcely more promising ; there is a small kitchen on each floor, and this one is in use ; a tidy woman is for ever stewing, and loading the air with garlic. The odor of singed steaks ascends to me when I care least for the carnal delights of life, and I am cut off in the midst of my best period by the hiss of the saucepan. But I have a kitchen all my own ; I too can fill the court with the fumes of dinner at whatever hour I choose, though there is only a kind of left-handed consolation in the thought, as I always go out to dine. Knock at my door, for you can go no farther. Entre ! A room no bigger than a billiard table, with a chimney filling one side of it, a window directly opposite, a door opening in on one end and one opening out at the other, for I sleep in the next apartment. There is scarcely room on the walls for the handful of photographs one is sure to take about with him — the dear home faces that do so much toward making the place habitable. My writingtable and two chairs obstruct the direct passage from door to door, and on festive occasion, when as many as six fellows have assembled at one and the same time, we most of us sit on the floor and smoke like regular Turks.

It is hardly worth while looking into the next room. The French bed is curtained with chintz of a pattern so like the wall-paper that they both seem of a piece. A clock, mirrors, toilet-stand, chairs, and the slip of carpet before the bed, that is sure to skate out from under you oyer the waxed floor just when you are least expecting such a catastrophe, that is all, but it is as much as you can expect for the money. There are drafts in both rooms. There is no extra charge for drafts ; they are not put down in your bill along with the candle, the soap, the towel, and the service. Every door, window, corner of the room, and crack in the floor sends up its chilling breath, and they all make for the chimney with the utmost speed. If you would be warm, keep away from the fire. It is utterly false, and hastens into the flue as if you hadn't paid for it and were not entitled to its feeble warmth. Yet here I write and look out of my window across the court, where one of the boys is at work on his sketches, and the hours pass rather too quickly (time never lags in Paris), for my work ought to be well over before breakfast. You see we take our coffee independently, when it is most convenient, say anywhere from 7 to 11 A. m. ; coffee or chocolate and a bit of bread keep us in working trim until breakfast.

Breakfast is quite like a noon dinner, with soups and dessert, if we prefer them. It begins shortly after twelve o'clock and lasts an hour or two. We all meet at breakfast in the cremerie over the street. It is there that Theodore, who is learning American very rapidly, attends to us with a consideration worthy of a man of twice his years and experience. The affairs of the day are duly canvassed ; we plot a thousand pleasant things and live up to about half of them ; we discuss art, literature, the prime donne, music, and the masque. We burn the fragrant weed over tall glasses of black coffee, and grow boisterous, perchance, in argument or repartee, until a flying missile lands in our midst — a bread crust of convenient caliber — and civil war is declared for the space of five minutes. The bread flies in all directions ; the old frequenters of the cremerie look on with a half -smile, as if they could excuse this sort of thing in Americans, but in no other people. Those who are new to us are filled with astonishment and alarm, and the plump proprietor, who has been sitting along with his pretty niece in the pulpit by the door, descends upon us like an irate pedagogue, and we are persuaded to silence and decorum. Between breakfast and dinner there are six hours at our disposal. We revisit the Louvre and the Luxembourg for the fiftieth time, going now to our favorite pictures and statues, and ignoring the miles of canvas and the quarries of marble that surround us on every side.

Some of us return to work at the atelier, the studio, the chamber, wherever our work lies. We wander thither, singly or in pairs, and the cremerie is left totally deserted. Dinner is even more joyous than breakfast, for we have probably accomplished something, and our work is over for the day. We sit two or three hours at table ; nothing but an early theatre or an engagement can turn us away from the luxury of our evening meal. But the cremerie closes early, and we are gradually snuffed out of the establishment as the gas-jets are extinguished one by one. Then come visitations among the boys. There is a wide range of haunts to choose from ; you can take a Bohemian quarter like my own, for instance, one of those cheerless resting-places such as a fellow on the wing grows horribly used to, or you can climb into a cozy nook in some great building where a resident student has feathered a nest for himself and is making the best of his life abroad. Here you find pictures, statuettes, a piano, a fire that is positively cheerful, and a kettle that sings in the corner of the grate — for there is something warming in perspective. Perhaps it is chess, or cards, or music, or story-telling ; certainly it is the social pipe, and a few genial and wholesome hours that end too early. We are not always decorous in the Mont Blanc ; there is a room on the top floor front that has known the wildest revels, and this too at the most unseasonable hours. I would gladly frown upon this thing and point a moral, though I am unskilled in that line, but I happen to have been one of the revelers.

The South was entertaining the North with champagne and cigars one evening ; from Maine to California there was the best possible feeling, and the South was, in turn, embraced by representatives from the proudest cities of our land. After our reconciliation, when the hour for story-telling had set in, and each in his turn was prepared to outdo his neighbor in a lively but generous spirit of rivalry, we were interrupted by the approach of heavy feet, and the opening and severe slamming of the door in the room next ours. He was a Frenchman, and it was his custom to put off his shoes five minutes after his entrance and dash them down in the hall with unnecessary and objectionable violence. Again he would crash his door and then retire to rest. This thing had been done too often in the dead of night, when the whole house was thrown into a state of alarm, to be any longer passed over in silence by the United States of America. We resolved that, if that Frenchman hurled his boots into the hall that night (or rather morning), he would do it at his peril. We held our breath to listen ; his door was suddenly clutched and thrown open ; the boots thundered on the hall floor ; the door was shut with a terrific report, and at that moment we howled in chorus. France and the United States are supposed to be on the best possible terms ; no doubt they are, over the river, but in the Latin Quarter, America will no longer endanger her tympanum by nightly permitting the violent explosion of French shoe-leather immedi- 2 ately under her ears. We flew into the long, waxed hall ; impelled by patriotism and champagne we dashed those boots throughout the building, up stairs and down, out of windows into the court, and back again through space, skillfully caught on the fly by Chicago ; up to the ceiling again and again, and then bowled over the shining floor, those boots did more duty in fifteen minutes than ever before since they were first pulled from the original last. And then, exhausted, beginning to find life a burden, and to fear that we had few if any friends in this world, in fact, suddenly realizing that we were perhaps all orphans, or deserved to be, we embraced madly and went shrieking to our several apartments. Our concierge the next day was not kindly disposed toward us. She took us each in turn, as we contributed our keys to the rack in her sentry-box, and reproached us bitterly. I saw Chicago, speechless but defiant, receiving the brunt of the abuse. It was emphasized with a long wand which was waved fiercely in the air, but there was no personal violence, nor the administration of anything more unpalatable than a torrent of French invective, strengthened with much offensive truth. Take the head of an india-rubber doll, apply your thumb and finger to either ear, compress the skull till your thumb and finger meet, and the eyes of the doll slide on to each side of the face, like the eyes of a fish, and you

PARIS BY GASLIGHT. 19

have the very image of our concierge as she appeared the morning after the sacking of the house. Some of us left for our health ; we wanted quiet apartments where our friends would not be turned forth into the street with a smile and a lie.

II. Paris By Gaslight

Hotel du Mont Blanc, Rue de Seine, Paris. Our hotel is like a great boys' boarding-school. We from time to time smoke out our neighbors in the most playful manner. We occasionally indulge in a light engagement with pillows, robed in the brief garments of our sleep. We are not always sleepy, and perhaps would fain return again to citizens' dress, and go forth seeking the untimely veal pie, which is obtainable at a reduced rate owing to the lateness of the hour and the unfavorable symptoms already developing in the pie ; we sometimes do this, and at such times we find it a merciful relief from the tedious gayeties of the French capital ; but just now we are called into action by the bare-kneed battalion, heavily mounted, and all thoughts of pie are driven from our minds till after the heat of the engagement has subsided and there are signs of returning peace. This sort of thing doesn't happen every night ; believe it not of us, for we are, after all, workers, and pretty hard ones, too. Not one of us but has ambition, not one but hopes to return to his distant home with a record that will gladden the hearts of those who have been hoping and praying for him all these months. We must have our recreation. Great Heaven ! would you have us old before our time ? Dullhearted, stiff-jointed, sad-eyed things who have lost the faculty of enjoyment ? Hence the medicinal properties of the Boullier are strongly urged, and we hie us with expectant steps to the gay halls where sin skips nimbly arm in arm with innocence and verdancy and the inquiring mind of the curious and the passive spirit of the traveling correspondent. Away beyond the lovely gardens of the Luxembourg, the gardens of our quarter, is the Boullier, with a dazzling array of gas-jets flaming over its fagade. We fall in along the line of visitors besieging the ticket office, in our turn pay a franc admission, and the next moment find ourselves at the top of a broad flight of stairs leading into a gorgeous cellar. The decorations are Moorish or mongrel, I know not which ; but they are sufficiently garish to suit the character of the place. In the center of the great hall is an oasis filled with musicians. They smoke, chat, lean over the railing with hats on the backs of their heads, and are quite indifferent to the opinion of any one present. Per-

PARIS BY GASLIGHT. 21

haps they are right. Who cares for the opinion of any one here, though we ourselves are of the number ? The time and the place annul all caution, pride, modesty — everything, in fact, save a desire to smoke and quench one's thirst and be jolly. A thousand lamps of every lovely tint swing from the painted ceiling, and the many arches supported by light columns are again and again repeated in the long mirrors that line the walls. At the end of the hall is a pretty artificial garden, with its grottoes and its pools of goldfish, its fountains, statues, and beds of lovely flowers ; and everywhere there are small round tables thronged with men and women who do nothing but drink, drink, drink, and smoke and laugh boisterously.

Crash ! the music has begun ! There is a rush for the open spaces, where only is dancing possible ; there is no director nor floor-manager, no method at all ; every one looks out for himself or herself, and somehow out of the confusion a quadrille is formed in one corner, and then another and another, until there are a dozen of them well at work, or at play, which is it ? — and by this time the first figure of the set is over. The spectators crowd close about the dancers, and are often troublesome. This is the kingdom of license, and you may say what you please to any one, dance with whom you choose, do what you like ; in truth you are expected not to be stupid when you come to the Boullier. As the dance progresses the interest increases, for the dancers become heated, and it is only at such times that the can-can is endurable. The shrill music crashes through the liveliest figure of the quadrille ; we work our way into the crowd until we can stand on tip-toe and look over some one's shoulder. Before us are two couples, very young ones, but with strangely wise faces, worldly wise I mean, and with a kind of devilish grace in their every motion that fascinates you. They advance and recede with infinite swagger. They throw themselves suddenly into attitudes that defy description ; as well attempt to picture in words the writhing of a tigress as she plays with her young ; the voluptuous posing, the quivering of the supple limbs, the curving of the spine and the waving to and fro of the head, snake-like and full of cunning ; the sly, soft crouching that indicate a premeditated spring. Whoop la! There you have it ! The men — they are mere boys — dash their genteel beavers on to the napes of their necks, seize the skirts of their coats, and go through a series of gymnastic feats as ludicrous as they are ungraceful. The women — they are girls — switch up their skirts above the knee, and deliberately kick over the heads of their partners. Not satisfied with this display, one of them grasps her ankle with one hand and raises it above her head, where she waves her dainty boot to and fro, keep-

PARIS BY GASLIGHT. 23

ing time to the music. The other turns a clumsysummersault and lands in the center of the open space, where she rests with her two feet pointing north and south, quite in the manner of a circus boy when he spreads his legs sideways like a pair of compasses, and this is hailed with delight by the spectators. There is nothing after that save a repetition of the same sort of ungraceful climax, and even the dancers seem to grow weary of it, for they seldom finish the last figure, but turn away and lose themselves in the crowd. Every alternate dance is a can-can quadrille, between which come waltzes, polkas, etc. It is in the waltz only that the dancers display the daring that alone makes the Boullier attractive or even interesting. Yet three times a week this hall is filled from 9 p. m. to midnight ; the low gallery on three sides of it is always crowded with spectators, who sit at their tables with beer and cigars, and watch the dancers to the end. You will find every class of people at the Boullier and the other dance halls of Paris where the reputation of the dancers is dubious. English swells in monk-like ulsters sometimes have with them a fair companion (let us trust she is fair), who is closely veiled, who never for a moment quits his side, who is evidently shy and out of place, and is probably his bride. The American is there, feeling quite at home, and refusing to be astonished at anything Parisian.

We are there sometimes, many of us together ; we look on at the same old dances, as danced by the same old dancers, who are mostly professionals hired for the occasion. We have learned to know the faces of many who go always to these halls ; we can now point you to the best set of can-can dancers, who show infinite art and exquisite grace in their interpretation of this barbaric pantomime. We lounge about till the air has become utterly oppressive with the smoke and the heat and the hubbub. Late in the night there is nothing but riot ; loud, meaningless laughter ; the skipping to and fro of those who have but one desire left, and that is to create as much disturbance on as small a capital as possible. We withdraw while the room is still in a whirl, and the dancers at the farther end of the room float about in the thick smoke like ghosts ; while the click of glasses and the screams of unnatural joy mingle and are lost in the deafening crash of the orchestra. Probably we go down the street arm in arm, singing the songs of home, such as "Silver Threads, " " Senators, whar you goin'?" and other airs with which it is our delight to astonish the fat cabmen, those rosy fellows who line the street at the most unearthly hours, and who look all alike, with a likeness that is of nothing in heaven nor earth, nor the waters under the earth, but only of the sleepy, sleek, round, expressionless cabmen of Paris. Having aroused many sleepers

FROM THE LATIN QUARTER. 25

with the fierce rendering of favorite national airs, and attracted the attention of a brace of gendarmes, the handsomest and most elegant fellows in Paris, we come home to the Mont Blanc, ring up the night-watchman, who sleeps with a rope just over his head, and in his dream pulls the heavy lock on the outer door without waking; pushing in the swinging panel in the great door, the great door which is not opened till morning, we light our respective candles, take keys, and bid farewell to one another and to the frivolities of life in general, and go yawning to our beds.

III. FROM THE LATItf QUARTER

Hotel du Mont Blanc, Rue de Seine, Paris. For two months I seem to have been dashed from one extreme to another, through the widest range of experiences I have ever known in so brief a time in a single locality. The Latin Quarter is not in itself altogether lovely; the streets are tangled and narrow and unclean. The houses are mostly ugly. We have the fine church of St. Sulpice only a stone's throw distant, and close at hand is beautiful old St. Germain, the oldest and perhaps most picturesque church in Paris, with its frescoes by that devout Catholic artist, Hippolyte Flandrin. Around the corner is the small house with the turret and the grated windows where Charlotte Corday dealt death to Marat ; but the whole corner is being swept away to make room for newer and less interesting buildings. All up and down these streets there are shops where antique books, prints, and all manner of bric-abrac may be bargained for. The Seine is lined with vendors of cheap literature ; near St. Sulpice there is an inexhaustible store of sacred prints, medals, rosaries, and church furniture. Indeed, you can get almost anything you wish on our side of the river, and you will get it for half the price that is demanded on the Eue de Eivoli. It is not this alone which makes the Quarter a desirable residence for a student of limited means ; here he can live as he sees fit and no man shall say him yea or nay.

See how my days have passed in Paris, and tell me if they be not full of experience. After my coffee, which I too often take quite alone, I hasten to the bedside of a friend lying dangerously ill in a convent at the other end of the city. Her illness, her fatal illness, alone gains me admission into the seclusion of this serene retreat. For one hour — having been admitted through the ponderous gates into a garden where the statue of the Madonna, now packed in straw to protect it against the frosts, is covered with shivering birds, who cling to it for a little warmth — having found

FROM THE LATIN QUARTER. 27

my friend better or worse, as the case may be, for one hour I know the impressive silence of the sick-chamber, and know also the companionship of those low-voiced sisters, whose lives are sealed to suffering and death. When my visitation is over, I find that I am booked for breakfast with that capital fellow, the author of "My Paris," when I am sure of absorbing something of his exhilarating atmosphere. Having quitted his chambers with a freshly-lit cigar, I return to work. Or, if I am out of working humor, there is the studio of a young marine painter, of Philadelphia, away up in a splendid old abbey, where at night the rustle of silk is heard and muttering voices, where shadowy forms float about in the moonlight. What a strange, unwritten history that abbey must have ! Just now Philadelphia's unrivaled collection of pipes interests us more deeply, and we smoke, and dream of his moonlit seas and wild bits of windy coast, and talk largely of the Centennial. Or, it may be, I find my way to California's den, decorated with studies that range from Shasta to the sea.

In the intervals 'twixt my early visit and my late revisit to the chamber of sorrow and suffering, many little events occur ; too many to be recorded, and too uneventful, most of them, to be worth recording. Often I have turned in at the Morgue, and found it usually the favorite resort of very small children ; boys and girls running on errands make it convenient to look in at the discolored bodies stretched stark and stiff under the water-spout, with a great horror settled on their faces. Peace comes not to these suicides and these victims of hunger and rage. Even under the shadow of Notre Dame, almost within the glow of the tapers that flicker before the altar of our Blessed Lady of Victories, they lie there, the forsaken victims of hopeless defeat. Again and again I turn to seek consolation by the domestic hearth of San Francisco friends, where I am sure of a welcome and a dinner of home dishes, such as are as good for the heart-hungry as for those whose cravings are more carnal. There is one restaurant where we boys resort to restore our souls at an extravagant figure. The American patriot and the pancake are inseparable ; misery and mince-pie can not dwell under the same roof. We are, for the time being, happy and patriotic to the last degree. What shall I say of the chaste retreat, the dainty drawing-room, done up in the Louis XIV style, with its variegated upholstery, its cupids, its clocks, its screens, and the thousand and one bits of finery that make the whole look like a big play-house ? Here I meet old friends, and we live over again the California days.