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The Paris Sketch Book

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"Some love the matin-chimes, which toll
The hour of prayer to sinner:
But better far's the mid-day bell,
Which speaks the hour of dinner;
For when I see a smoking fish,
Or capon drown'd in gravy,
Or noble haunch on silver dish,
Full glad I sing mine ave.

"My pulpit is an ale-house bench,
Whereon I sit so jolly;
A smiling rosy country wench
My saint and patron holy.
I kiss her cheek so red and sleek,
I press her ringlets wavy;
And in her willing ear I speak
A most religious ave.

"And if I'm blind, yet heaven is kind,
And holy saints forgiving;
For sure he leads a right good life
Who thus admires good living.
Above, they say, our flesh is air,
Our blood celestial ichor:
Oh, grant! mid all the changes there,
They may not change our liquor!"


And with this pious wish the holy confessor tumbled under the table
in an agony of devout drunkenness; whilst the knights, the men-at-
arms, and the wicked little pages, rang out the last verse with a
most melodious and emphatic glee. "I am sorry, fair uncle,"
hiccupped Sir Randal, "that, in the matter of the ave, we could not
oblige thee in a more orthodox manner; but the holy father has
failed, and there is not another man in the hall who hath an idea
of a prayer."

"It is my own fault," said Sir Rollo; "for I hanged the last
confessor." And he wished his nephew a surly good-night, as he
prepared to quit the room.

"Au revoir, gentlemen," said the devil Mercurius; and once more
fixed his tail round the neck of his disappointed companion.

The spirit of poor Rollo was sadly cast down; the devil, on the
contrary, was in high good humor. He wagged his tail with the most
satisfied air in the world, and cut a hundred jokes at the expense
of his poor associate. On they sped, cleaving swiftly through the
cold night winds, frightening the birds that were roosting in the
woods, and the owls that were watching in the towers.

In the twinkling of an eye, as it is known, devils can fly hundreds
of miles: so that almost the same beat of the clock which left
these two in Champagne, found them hovering over Paris. They
dropped into the court of the Lazarist Convent, and winded their
way, through passage and cloister, until they reached the door of
the prior's cell.

Now the prior, Rollo's brother, was a wicked and malignant
sorcerer; his time was spent in conjuring devils and doing wicked
deeds, instead of fasting, scourging, and singing holy psalms: this
Mercurius knew; and he, therefore, was fully at ease as to the
final result of his wager with poor Sir Roger.

"You seem to be well acquainted with the road," said the knight.

"I have reason," answered Mercurius, "having, for a long period,
had the acquaintance of his reverence, your brother; but you have
little chance with him."

"And why?" said Sir Rollo.

"He is under a bond to my master, never to say a prayer, or else
his soul and his body are forfeited at once."

"Why, thou false and traitorous devil!" said the enraged knight;
"and thou knewest this when we made our wager?"

"Undoubtedly: do you suppose I would have done so had there been
any chance of losing?"

And with this they arrived at Father Ignatius's door.

"Thy cursed presence threw a spell on my niece, and stopped the
tongue of my nephew's chaplain; I do believe that had I seen either
of them alone, my wager had been won."

"Certainly; therefore, I took good care to go with thee: however,
thou mayest see the prior alone, if thou wilt; and lo! his door is
open. I will stand without for five minutes, when it will be time
to commence our journey."

It was the poor Baron's last chance: and he entered his brother's
room more for the five minutes' respite than from any hope of
success.

Father Ignatius, the prior, was absorbed in magic calculations: he
stood in the middle of a circle of skulls, with no garment except
his long white beard, which reached to his knees; he was waving a
silver rod, and muttering imprecations in some horrible tongue.

But Sir Rollo came forward and interrupted his incantation. "I
am," said he, "the shade of thy brother Roger de Rollo; and have
come, from pure brotherly love, to warn thee of thy fate."

"Whence camest thou?"

"From the abode of the blessed in Paradise," replied Sir Roger, who
was inspired with a sudden thought; "it was but five minutes ago
that the Patron Saint of thy church told me of thy danger, and of
thy wicked compact with the fiend. 'Go,' said he, 'to thy
miserable brother, and tell him there is but one way by which he
may escape from paying the awful forfeit of his bond.'"

"And how may that be?" said the prior; "the false fiend hath
deceived me; I have given him my soul, but have received no worldly
benefit in return. Brother! dear brother! how may I escape?"

"I will tell thee. As soon as I heard the voice of blessed St.
Mary Lazarus" (the worthy Earl had, at a pinch, coined the name of
a saint), "I left the clouds, where, with other angels, I was
seated, and sped hither to save thee. 'Thy brother,' said the
Saint, 'hath but one day more to live, when he will become for all
eternity the subject of Satan; if he would escape, he must boldly
break his bond, by saying an ave.'"

"It is the express condition of the agreement," said the unhappy
monk, "I must say no prayer, or that instant I become Satan's, body
and soul."

"It is the express condition of the Saint," answered Roger,
fiercely; "pray, brother, pray, or thou art lost for ever."

So the foolish monk knelt down, and devoutly sung out an ave.
"Amen!" said Sir Roger, devoutly.

"Amen!" said Mercurius, as, suddenly, coming behind, he seized
Ignatius by his long beard, and flew up with him to the top of the
church-steeple.

The monk roared, and screamed, and swore against his brother; but
it was of no avail: Sir Roger smiled kindly on him, and said, "Do
not fret, brother; it must have come to this in a year or two."

And he flew alongside of Mercurius to the steeple-top: BUT THIS
TIME THE DEVIL HAD NOT HIS TAIL ROUND HIS NECK. "I will let thee
off thy bet," said he to the daemon; for he could afford, now, to be
generous.

"I believe, my lord," said the daemon, politely, "that our ways
separate here." Sir Roger sailed gayly upwards: while Mercurius
having bound the miserable monk faster than ever, he sunk downwards
to earth, and perhaps lower. Ignatius was heard roaring and
screaming as the devil dashed him against the iron spikes and
buttresses of the church.


The moral of this story will be given in the second edition.




MADAME SAND AND THE NEW APOCALYPSE.


I don't know an impression more curious than that which is formed
in a foreigner's mind, who has been absent from this place for two
or three years, returns to it, and beholds the change which has
taken place, in the meantime, in French fashions and ways of
thinking. Two years ago, for instance, when I left the capital, I
left the young gentlemen of France with their hair brushed en
toupet in front, and the toes of their boots round; now the boot-
toes are pointed, and the hair combed flat, and, parted in the
middle, falls in ringlets on the fashionable shoulders; and, in
like manner, with books as with boots, the fashion has changed
considerably, and it is not a little curious to contrast the old
modes with the new. Absurd as was the literary dandyism of those
days, it is not a whit less absurd now: only the manner is changed,
and our versatile Frenchmen have passed from one caricature to
another.

The revolution may be called a caricature of freedom, as the empire
was of glory; and what they borrow from foreigners undergoes the
same process. They take top-boots and mackintoshes from across the
water, and caricature our fashions; they read a little, very
little, Shakespeare, and caricature our poetry: and while in
David's time art and religion were only a caricature of Heathenism,
now, on the contrary, these two commodities are imported from
Germany; and distorted caricatures originally, are still farther
distorted on passing the frontier.

I trust in heaven that German art and religion will take no hold in
our country (where there is a fund of roast-beef that will expel
any such humbug in the end); but these sprightly Frenchmen have
relished the mystical doctrines mightily; and having watched the
Germans, with their sanctified looks, and quaint imitations of the
old times, and mysterious transcendental talk, are aping many of
their fashions; as well and solemnly as they can: not very
solemnly, God wot; for I think one should always prepare to grin
when a Frenchman looks particularly grave, being sure that there
is something false and ridiculous lurking under the owl-like
solemnity.

When last in Paris, we were in the midst of what was called a
Catholic reaction. Artists talked of faith in poems and pictures;
churches were built here and there; old missals were copied and
purchased; and numberless portraits of saints, with as much gilding
about them as ever was used in the fifteenth century, appeared in
churches, ladies' boudoirs, and picture-shops. One or two
fashionable preachers rose, and were eagerly followed; the very
youth of the schools gave up their pipes and billiards for some
time, and flocked in crowds to Notre Dame, to sit under the feet of
Lacordaire. I went to visit the Church of Notre Dame de Lorette
yesterday, which was finished in the heat of this Catholic rage,
and was not a little struck by the similarity of the place to the
worship celebrated in it, and the admirable manner in which the
architect has caused his work to express the public feeling of the
moment. It is a pretty little bijou of a church: it is supported
by sham marble pillars; it has a gaudy ceiling of blue and gold,
which will look very well for some time; and is filled with gaudy
pictures and carvings, in the very pink of the mode. The
congregation did not offer a bad illustration of the present state
of Catholic reaction. Two or three stray people were at prayers;
there was no service; a few countrymen and idlers were staring
about at the pictures; and the Swiss, the paid guardian of the
place, was comfortably and appropriately asleep on his bench at the
door. I am inclined to think the famous reaction is over: the
students have taken to their Sunday pipes and billiards again; and
one or two cafés have been established, within the last year, that
are ten times handsomer than Notre Dame de Lorette.

However, if the immortal Görres and the German mystics have had
their day, there is the immortal Göthe, and the Pantheists; and I
incline to think that the fashion has set very strongly in their
favor. Voltaire and the Encyclopaedians are voted, now, barbares,
and there is no term of reprobation strong enough for heartless
Humes and Helvetiuses, who lived but to destroy, and who only
thought to doubt. Wretched as Voltaire's sneers and puns are, I
think there is something more manly and earnest even in them, than
in the present muddy French transcendentalism. Pantheism is the
word now; one and all have begun to éprouver the besoin of a
religious sentiment; and we are deluged with a host of gods
accordingly. Monsieur de Balzac feels himself to be inspired;
Victor Hugo is a god; Madame Sand is a god; that tawdry man of
genius, Jules Janin, who writes theatrical reviews for the Débats,
has divine intimations; and there is scarce a beggarly, beardless
scribbler of poems and prose, but tells you, in his preface, of the
sainteté of the sacerdoce littéraire; or a dirty student, sucking
tobacco and beer, and reeling home with a grisette from the
chaumière, who is not convinced of the necessity of a new
"Messianism," and will hiccup, to such as will listen, chapters of
his own drunken Apocalypse. Surely, the negatives of the old days
were far less dangerous than the assertions of the present; and you
may fancy what a religion that must be, which has such high
priests.

There is no reason to trouble the reader with details of the lives
of many of these prophets and expounders of new revelations.
Madame Sand, for instance, I do not know personally, and can only
speak of her from report. True or false, the history, at any rate,
is not very edifying; and so may be passed over: but, as a certain
great philosopher told us, in very humble and simple words, that we
are not to expect to gather grapes from thorns, or figs from
thistles, we may, at least, demand, in all persons assuming the
character of moralist or philosopher--order, soberness, and
regularity of life; for we are apt to distrust the intellect that
we fancy can be swayed by circumstance or passion; and we know how
circumstance and passion WILL sway the intellect: how mortified
vanity will form excuses for itself; and how temper turns angrily
upon conscience, that reproves it. How often have we called our
judge our enemy, because he has given sentence against us!--How
often have we called the right wrong, because the right condemns
us! And in the lives of many of the bitter foes of the Christian
doctrine, can we find no personal reason for their hostility? The
men in Athens said it was out of regard for religion that they
murdered Socrates; but we have had time, since then, to reconsider
the verdict; and Socrates' character is pretty pure now, in spite
of the sentence and the jury of those days.

The Parisian philosophers will attempt to explain to you the
changes through which Madame Sand's mind has passed,--the
initiatory trials, labors, and sufferings which she has had to go
through,--before she reached her present happy state of mental
illumination. She teaches her wisdom in parables, that are,
mostly, a couple of volumes long; and began, first, by an eloquent
attack on marriage, in the charming novel of "Indiana." "Pity,"
cried she, "for the poor woman who, united to a being whose brute
force makes him her superior, should venture to break the bondage
which is imposed on her, and allow her heart to be free."

In support of this claim of pity, she writes two volumes of the
most exquisite prose. What a tender, suffering creature is
Indiana; how little her husband appreciates that gentleness which
he is crushing by his tyranny and brutal scorn; how natural it is
that, in the absence of his sympathy, she, poor clinging confiding
creature, should seek elsewhere for shelter; how cautious should we
be, to call criminal--to visit with too heavy a censure--an act
which is one of the natural impulses of a tender heart, that seeks
but for a worthy object of love. But why attempt to tell the tale
of beautiful Indiana? Madame Sand has written it so well, that not
the hardest-hearted husband in Christendom can fail to be touched
by her sorrows, though he may refuse to listen to her argument.
Let us grant, for argument's sake, that the laws of marriage,
especially the French laws of marriage, press very cruelly upon
unfortunate women.

But if one wants to have a question of this, or any nature,
honestly argued, it is, better, surely, to apply to an indifferent
person for an umpire. For instance, the stealing of pocket-
handkerchiefs or snuff-boxes may or may not be vicious; but if we,
who have not the wit, or will not take the trouble to decide the
question ourselves, want to hear the real rights of the matter, we
should not, surely, apply to a pickpocket to know what he thought
on the point. It might naturally be presumed that he would be
rather a prejudiced person--particularly as his reasoning, if
successful, might get him OUT OF GAOL. This is a homely
illustration, no doubt; all we would urge by it is, that Madame
Sand having, according to the French newspapers, had a stern
husband, and also having, according to the newspapers, sought
"sympathy" elsewhere, her arguments may be considered to be
somewhat partial, and received with some little caution.

And tell us who have been the social reformers?--the haters, that
is, of the present system, according to which we live, love, marry,
have children, educate them, and endow them--ARE THEY PURE
THEMSELVES? I do believe not one; and directly a man begins to
quarrel with the world and its ways, and to lift up, as he calls
it, the voice of his despair, and preach passionately to mankind
about this tyranny of faith, customs, laws; if we examine what the
personal character of the preacher is, we begin pretty clearly to
understand the value of the doctrine. Any one can see why Rousseau
should be such a whimpering reformer, and Byron such a free and
easy misanthropist, and why our accomplished Madame Sand, who has a
genius and eloquence inferior to neither, should take the present
condition of mankind (French-kind) so much to heart, and labor so
hotly to set it right.

After "Indiana" (which, we presume, contains the lady's notions
upon wives and husbands) came "Valentine," which may be said to
exhibit her doctrine, in regard of young men and maidens, to whom
the author would accord, as we fancy, the same tender license.
"Valentine" was followed by "Lelia," a wonderful book indeed,
gorgeous in eloquence, and rich in magnificent poetry: a regular
topsyturvyfication of morality, a thieves' and prostitutes'
apotheosis. This book has received some late enlargements and
emendations by the writer; it contains her notions on morals,
which, as we have said, are so peculiar, that, alas! they only can
be mentioned here, not particularized: but of "Spiridion" we may
write a few pages, as it is her religious manifesto.

In this work, the lady asserts her pantheistical doctrine, and
openly attacks the received Christian creed. She declares it to be
useless now, and unfitted to the exigencies and the degree of
culture of the actual world; and, though it would be hardly worth
while to combat her opinions in due form, it is, at least, worth
while to notice them, not merely from the extraordinary eloquence
and genius of the woman herself, but because they express the
opinions of a great number of people besides: for she not only
produces her own thoughts, but imitates those of others very
eagerly; and one finds in her writings so much similarity with
others, or, in others, so much resemblance to her, that the book
before us may pass for the expression of the sentiments of a
certain French party.

"Dieu est mort," says another writer of the same class, and of
great genius too.--"Dieu est mort," writes Mr. Henry Heine,
speaking of the Christian God; and he adds, in a daring figure of
speech;--"N'entendez-vous pas sonner la Clochette?--on porte les
sacremens à un Dieu qui se meurt!" Another of the pantheist
poetical philosophers, Mr. Edgar Quinet, has a poem, in which
Christ and the Virgin Mary are made to die similarly, and the
former is classed with Prometheus. This book of "Spiridion" is a
continuation of the theme, and perhaps you will listen to some of
the author's expositions of it.

It must be confessed that the controversialists of the present day
have an eminent advantage over their predecessors in the days of
folios; it required some learning then to write a book, and some
time, at least--for the very labor of writing out a thousand such
vast pages would demand a considerable period. But now, in the age
of duodecimos, the system is reformed altogether: a male or female
controversialist draws upon his imagination, and not his learning;
makes a story instead of an argument, and, in the course of 150
pages (where the preacher has it all his own way) will prove or
disprove you anything. And, to our shame be it said, we
Protestants have set the example of this kind of proselytism--those
detestable mixtures of truth, lies, false sentiment, false
reasoning, bad grammar, correct and genuine philanthropy and piety--
I mean our religious tracts, which any woman or man, be he ever so
silly, can take upon himself to write, and sell for a penny, as if
religious instruction were the easiest thing in the world. We, I
say, have set the example in this kind of composition, and all the
sects of the earth will, doubtless, speedily follow it. I can
point you out blasphemies in famous pious tracts that are as
dreadful as those above mentioned; but this is no place for such
discussions, and we had better return to Madame Sand. As Mrs.
Sherwood expounds, by means of many touching histories and
anecdotes of little boys and girls, her notions of church history,
church catechism, church doctrine;--as the author of "Father
Clement, a Roman Catholic Story," demolishes the stately structure
of eighteen centuries, the mighty and beautiful Roman Catholic
faith, in whose bosom repose so many saints and sages,--by the
means of a three-and-sixpenny duodecimo volume, which tumbles over
the vast fabric, as David's pebble-stone did Goliath;--as, again,
the Roman Catholic author of "Geraldine" falls foul of Luther and
Calvin, and drowns the awful echoes of their tremendous protest by
the sounds of her little half-crown trumpet: in like manner, by
means of pretty sentimental tales, and cheap apologues, Mrs. Sand
proclaims HER truth--that we need a new Messiah, and that the
Christian religion is no more! O awful, awful name of God! Light
unbearable! Mystery unfathomable! Vastness immeasurable!--Who are
these who come forward to explain the mystery, and gaze unblinking
into the depths of the light, and measure the immeasurable vastness
to a hair? O name, that God's people of old did fear to utter! O
light, that God's prophet would have perished had he seen! Who are
these that are now so familiar with it?--Women, truly; for the most
part weak women--weak in intellect, weak mayhap in spelling and
grammar, but marvellously strong in faith:--women, who step down to
the people with stately step and voice of authority, and deliver
their twopenny tablets, as if there were some Divine authority for
the wretched nonsense recorded there!

With regard to the spelling and grammar, our Parisian Pythoness
stands, in the goodly fellowship, remarkable. Her style is a
noble, and, as far as a foreigner can judge, a strange tongue,
beautifully rich and pure. She has a very exuberant imagination,
and, with it, a very chaste style of expression. She never
scarcely indulges in declamation, as other modern prophets do, and
yet her sentences are exquisitely melodious and full. She seldom
runs a thought to death (after the manner of some prophets, who,
when they catch a little one, toy with it until they kill it), but
she leaves you at the end of one of her brief, rich, melancholy
sentences, with plenty of food for future cogitation. I can't
express to you the charm of them; they seem to me like the sound of
country bells--provoking I don't know what vein of musing and
meditation, and falling sweetly and sadly on the ear.

This wonderful power of language must have been felt by most people
who read Madame Sand's first books, "Valentine" and "Indiana": in
"Spiridion" it is greater, I think, than ever; and for those who
are not afraid of the matter of the novel, the manner will be found
most delightful. The author's intention, I presume, is to
describe, in a parable, her notions of the downfall of the Catholic
church; and, indeed, of the whole Christian scheme: she places her
hero in a monastery in Italy, where, among the characters about
him, and the events which occur, the particular tenets of Madame
Dudevant's doctrine are not inaptly laid down. Innocent, faithful,
tender-hearted, a young monk, by name Angel, finds himself, when he
has pronounced his vows, an object of aversion and hatred to the
godly men whose lives he so much respects, and whose love he would
make any sacrifice to win. After enduring much, he flings himself
at the feet of his confessor, and begs for his sympathy and
counsel; but the confessor spurns him away, and accuses him,
fiercely, of some unknown and terrible crime--bids him never return
to the confessional until contrition has touched his heart, and the
stains which sully his spirit are, by sincere repentance, washed
away.

"Thus speaking," says Angel, "Father Hegesippus tore away his robe,
which I was holding in my supplicating hands. In a sort of
wildness I still grasped it tighter; he pushed me fiercely from
him, and I fell with my face towards the ground. He quitted me,
closing violently after him the door of the sacristy, in which this
scene had passed. I was left alone in the darkness. Either from
the violence of my fall, or the excess of my grief, a vein had
burst in my throat, and a haemorrhage ensued. I had not the force
to rise; I felt my senses rapidly sinking, and, presently, I lay
stretched on the pavement, unconscious, and bathed in my blood."

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