Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 - Patrick Fraser Tytler (good books to read in english txt) 📗

embracing him, hope for his company at supper. This submissive meanness towards their tradesmen, is of course much increased by their dread of the day of reckoning; and is therefore ultimately the consequence of their poverty.

It happened that an English nobleman, who lately visited France, had shewn much kindness to one of the ancienne noblesse during his stay in England. For upwards of a year, he had insisted on his living with him at his country seat. Upon the eve of leaving England for France, he wrote to his old acquaintance, desiring him to take suitable apartments for him in Paris. The Frenchman returned a most polite answer, expressing how much he felt himself hurt by the idea that his Lordship should dream of taking apartments, whilst his hotel was at his service. The English nobleman, accordingly, lived for two months at the hotel; but to his astonishment, upon taking his departure, Monsieur presented him with a regular bill, charging for every article, and including a very high rent for the lodgings. This is hardly to be credited by those unacquainted with the present condition of France; but I am induced to believe the story to be in every particular correct, as the authority was unquestionable. This excessive poverty amongst the higher classes, their being often unable, from their narrow circumstances, to support a house and separate establishment, their living in miserable lodgings when they are low in purse, snatching a spare meal at some cheap restaurateur's, and being unaccustomed to the comfort of regular meals in their own house, is the cause that they are all devotedly and generally attached to good eating, whenever they can get it, and that to such an excess, that a stranger, in attending a ball supper in France, or treating a French party to dinner, will be astonished at the perseverance of their palates, and the wonderful expedition with which both sexes contrive to travel through the various dishes on the table. The behaviour of Sancho at Camacho's wedding, when he rolled his delighted eyes over the assembled flesh-pots, is but a prototype of what I have witnessed equally in French men and French women upon these occasions.

At a ball supper, where it is often impossible in England to prevail upon the ladies to taste a morsel, you may see these delicate females of France, regale themselves with dressed dishes, swallow, with incredible avidity, repeated bowls of strong soup, and after a short interval, sit down to potations of hot punch, strong enough to admit of being set on fire. Nothing can certainly be more destructive of all ideas of feminine delicacy, than to see a beautiful woman with one of these midnight bowls burning before her, and when her complexion is rendered livid by its flames, looking through this medium like some unknown but voracious inhabitant of another world.

An English family of our acquaintance, who had settled at Aix, and who wished to see company, imagined, naturally, that it would be necessary to go through all the tedious process of preliminary introductions, which are necessary in England. A French friend was consulted upon the subject, and his advice was as simple as it was effectual: [52]"Donnez un souper, cela fera courir tout le monde." Sometime after this, happening to be conversing with the same gentleman upon this subject:[53] "Soyez bien sur, Monsieur, (said he), que si le diable donne a souper, tout le monde soupera dans l'enfers."

Versatility, that ruling feature in the French character, ought not to be forgotten. They have of late been so accustomed to change, that change has become not only natural, but, one would imagine, in some measure necessary to their happiness. They change their leaders and their sovereigns, with as much apparent ease as they do their fashions. On the slightest new impulse, they change their thoughts, their oaths, their love, their hatred. In this particular, a French mob is the most remarkable thing in the world; they cannot exist without some favourite yell, some particular watch-word of the day, or rather of the hour. One day it is, [54]"A bas le tyran! A bas les soldats!" the next it is "Vive l'Empereur! Vivent les Marchaux! Vive l'armée!" or it is, "Vive Louis le desiré! Vive le fils de bon Henri!" and in the next breath, "Vive le nation! Point de loix foedaux! Point des rois! Point de noblesse!" then, "Point des droits reunis! Point de conscriptions!" and during the desolating æra of the revolution, their favourite cry presented an exact picture of the character of the nation—of the same nation, which, in these dark days of continual horror, could yet amuse, itself by an exhibition of dancing-dogs, under the blood-dropping stage of the guillotine; their cry was then, [55]"Vive la Mort!" Utterly inattentive to these inconsistencies, the French people continue willingly to cry out whatever rallying word may be given to them by those agents who, working in secret, according to the ruling authorities and the prevailing politics of the day, are employed to excite them. The calamitous consequence of this mean and thoughtless principle is, that they submit themselves to the regulation of all the spies and police emissaries who, as the pensioned menials pf government, are continually insinuating themselves amongst them. Louis XVIII., unaccustomed to this system, from his long residence in England, has employed fewer spies than Napoleon, and the consequence has been, that the cry of Vive le Roi has never been re-echoed with that same high-sounding, though hollow enthusiasm, with which they vociferated Vive l'Empereur. An instance of the pliability of a French mob occurred a short time before our coming to Aix: When Napoleon, on his way to Elba, passed through Moulines, his carriage having halted at one of the inns, was immediately surrounded by a mob, amongst whom a cry of Vive l'Empereur was instantly raised. The Emperor's servants began laughing, and some one amongst, the mob imagining it to be in derision, exclaimed, with manifest disappointment, "Eh bien, Messieurs, que voulez vous donc; mais allons mes amis! crions tous Vive le Roi;" and having once received this new impulse, they not only raised, with one consent, a shout of Vive le Roi, but next moment, by their menaces, compelled Napoleon, who began to tremble for his person, to join in the cry of loyalty. Such was the miserable situation of that man, who, in the words of Augereau, [56]"apres avoir immolé des millions des victimes, n'a su mourir en soldat;" and such the treatment of a French mob to one whose name, the moment before, they had extolled with all the symptoms of the most devoted enthusiasm.

J'ai vu l'impie, adorè sur le terre
Pareil au cedre, il cachoit dans le cieux
Son front audacieux.
Il sembloit a son grè gouverner la tonnere,
Fouler aux pieds ses enemis vaincus,
Je ne fis que passer, il a'etoit deja plus.

Amidst all their misfortunes, the French people, and more especially the peasantry, have contrived to preserve their characteristic gaiety. They are still, without, doubt, the most cheerful people in Europe, the least liable to any thing like continued depression, and the most easily amused by trifles. If we except the peasantry, whose situation is comparatively comfortable, they are subject to continual deprivations. They are wretchedly poor, and driven by this poverty to meannesses which they would in other situations despise. Their labour is frequently demanded where refusal is impossible, and obedience attended with no remuneration. They themselves are hurried away, if young, to fill up the miserable quotas of the conscription; torn from the happiest scenes of their youth, and banished from every object of their affection. If old, they are doomed to pass their solitary years uncomforted, and unsupported. The hopes of their age may have fallen, but amidst all this complicated misery, it is indeed most wonderful that they yet continue to be cheerful. The accustomed gaiety of their spirits will not even then desert them; and meeting with a stranger who enters into conversation with them, or seated with a few friends at a caffé, they will sip their liqueurs, smoke their segars, and talk with enthusiasm of the triumphs and glory of the grande nation, although these triumphs may have given the fatal blow to all that constituted their happiness, and in this glory they may see the graves of their children. This is not patriotism: It is a far lower principle. It is produced by national pride, vanity, thoughtlessness, a contempt or ignorance of domestic happiness, and all this allied to an unconquerable levity and heartlessness of disposition. It is not therefore that severe but noble principle, the silent offspring between thought and sorrow, which soothes at least where it cannot cure, and alleviates the acuteness of individual sufferings, by the consolation that our friends have fallen in the courageous execution of their duty. It has in its composition none of those higher feelings, but is more an instinct, and one too of a shallow and degrading nature, than any thing like a steady and regulating moral principle.

This, however, which makes them unconscious to any thing like unhappiness, renders them, under imprisonment, banishment, and deprivation, more able to endure the hardships and reverses of war than any other troops.

It is perhaps an improper word in speaking of imprisonment and banishment to a Frenchman, to say they endure it better; the truth is, they do not feel it so acutely, and the reason is, that the military, owing to their restless and wandering life, are comparatively less attached than other troops to their native country. They suffer better, because they feel less.

In courage the English soldiers certainly equal them, and in physical strength they far surpass them; but the mind of a Frenchman is, for hard service, far better constituted than that of an Englishman. Nothing, it is well known, is so difficult as to rally an English force after any thing approaching even to a defeat. This is by no means the case with the French, and the history of the last campaign, preceding the restoration of the Borbons, contains a detailed account of many successive' defeats, after which the French army rallied and fought as undauntedly as before; and during the last war there was not perhaps a single battle contended with more determination than that of Toulouse.

In regard to the lower orders of the peasantry, it is amongst them alone that we can yet distinctly discern the last traces of the ancient French character. They are certainly, from the sale of the great landed estates at the revolution, (which, divided into small farms, were bought by the lower orders,) for the most part comparatively in a rich and independent situation; and poverty is far more generally felt by the higher classes of the nation, than by the regular peasantry of the country. Yet with all this, they have become neither insolent nor haughty to their superiors; and you will meet at this day with more real unsophisticated politeness, and more active civility amongst the present French peasantry, than is to be found among the nobility or the soldiery of the nation.

It is to them alone that the hopes of the revival of the French nation must ultimately turn. It is from this quarter that France, if she is ever to possess them, must alone derive those pacific energies, which, whilst they may render her as a nation less generally terrible, will yet cause her to be more individually happy.

In every country, we must regard the peasantry as the sinews and stamina of the state. They are, in every respect, to the nation what the heart is to the individual; the centre from which health, energy and vigour must be imparted to the remotest portions of the political body. If such is the rank held by the peasantry in