Whisper of paris

Brain, or heart of the land, which you will, as large cities are, Paris may claim to have nerves, muscles, and arteries centering in it, which but few capitals, by right of size, passions, horrors, loves, charms, mysteries, in a word, can reveal. To trace its emotions, impulses, secrets, wounds, cankers, joys, the following pages are devoted.

We must begin by taking up the further ends of threads which will soon lead us deep into its labyrinths, not without events on the way, only surpassed by those we shall meet in the mazes themselves.

In the year 1819, a singular project, incited by the current stories of left-handed marriages and loving episodes, as in the case of the Prince of Capua and Miss Penelope Smith, was put into operation by one Sarah Seyton, widow of the Earl of M'Gregor. Her brother, the Honorable Tom Seyton, assisted her to the utmost, fully prepared to aid his sister in matrimonially entangling any crown-wearer whomsoever; he was perfectly willing to participate with her in all the schemes and intrigues that might be useful toward the success of her endeavor to become the wife of a sovereign, however humble in possessions and power; but he would far rather have killed the sister whom he so devotedly loved, than he would have seen her become the mistress of a prince, even with the certainty of a subsequent marriage in reparation.

The matrimonial inventory drawn up by Tom, with the aid of the Almanach de Gotha, had a very satisfactory aspect. The Germanic Confederation, especially, furnished a numerous contingency of young presumptive sovereigns, the first to whom the adventurers meant to pay attention being thus designated in the diplomatic and infallible Almanac of Gotha for the year of 1819:

Genealogy of the Sovereigns of Europe and their Families.

GEROLSTEIN.

Grand-Duke MAXIMILIAN RUDOLPH, born December 10th, 1764.

Succeeded his father, CHARLES FREDERIC RUDOLPH, April 21st 1785.

Widower January, 1808, of Louisa, daughter of Prince JOHN

AUGUSTUS of Burglen.

SON,

GUSTAVUS RUDOLPH, born April 17th, 1803.

MOTHER,

Grand-Duchess JUDITH, dowager widow of the Grand-Duke

CHARLES FREDERIC RUDOLPH, April 21st, 1785.

Tom had sense enough to inscribe first on his list the youngest of the princes whom he desired for his brother-in-law, thinking that extreme youth was more easily seduced than riper age.

The Countes M'Gregor was not only favored with the introduction of the Marquis d'Harville (a friend of the grand-duke, to whom he had rendered great services in 1815, and a little of a suitor of the lady's while she was in Paris) and of the British Ambassador in Paris, but with that of her own personal appearance. To rare beauty and a singular aptitude of acquiring various accomplishments, was added a seductiveness all the more dangerous, because she possessed a mind unbending and calculating, a disposition cunning and selfish, a deep hypocrisy, a stubborn and despotic will-all hidden under the specious gloss of a generous, warm, and impassioned nature. Physically her organization was as deceptive as it was morally. Her large black eyes-which, by turns languished and beamed with beauty beneath their ebon lashes-could feign to admiration all the kindling fires of voluptuousness. And yet, the burning impulses of love beat not in her frozen bosom; never could a surprise of either the heart or the senses disturb the stern and pitiless schemes of this intriguing, egotistical, and ambitious girl.

Fortunately for her, her plans were assisted by one Dr. Polidori, a learned but hypocritical man, who hoped to be the future Richelieu over the puppet he trusted to convert Prince Rudolph into. The lady and her brother combined with Polidori against the youthful prince, whose only ally was his true friend, an English baronet, Sir Walter Murphy.

The Countess M'Gregor drove things to the end, and, during a brief absence of the grand-duke, was secretly married to Prince Rudolph. In time, about to become a mother, the artful woman began to clamor for an acknowledgment of the union. She braved exposure, hoping to force the prince into giving her the station she sought. All was discovered, easily, therefore. But the old duke was all-powerful within his realm: the clandestine union was pronounced null and void, and the countess expelled. Her latest act of vengeance was to inform Rudolph that their child had died. This was in 1827. But this assurance was on a par with her former falseness: the child, a girl, was handed over to Jacques Ferrand, a miserly notary in Paris, whose housekeeper got rid of it to a rogue known as Pierre Tournemine. When he at last ran to the end of his tether, and was sentenced to imprisonment in the Rochefort-hulks for forgery, he induced a woman called Gervais, but nicknamed the Screech-Owl (Chouette), to take the girl, now five or six years old, who brought the little creature up in the midst of as much cruelty as degradation.

Meanwhile the countess nursed the idea of wedding Prince Rudolph in a more secure manner. When, in time, he became grand-duke, she was more eager than ever to enjoy what she considered her own. Though he had married, she hoped; and, the second wife having died childless, the Countess M'Gregor followed Rudolph into Prance, where he traveled incognito as Count Duren. As a last resort to force the grand-duke into her ambitious aims, she sought for a girl of the age that her own would have been, to pass it off as their child. By chance, the woman to whom she applied was La Chouette, and hardly had she spoken of the likeness which the counterfeit would have to bear to the supposed suppressed child, than the woman recognized the very girl whom she had kept for years by her, or in view.

Yes, the offspring of Prince Rudolph and the countess was a common girl of the town, known as Fleur-de-Marie (the Virgin's Flower), for her touching religious beauty, as La Goualeuse (the Songstress), for her vocal ability, and La Pegriotte (Little Thief), out of La Chouette's anger that she would not be what she styled her.

She had long shunned her sad sisters in shame, and, indeed, in all her life had known but one friend. This was a sewing-girl known as Rigolette, or Miss Dimpleton, from her continual smiles; a maid with no strong ideas of virtue, but preserved from the miry path which poor Fleur-de-Marie had been forced to use, merely by being too hard-worked to have leisure to be bad.

Prince Rudolph entertained the most profound aversion for the mother of his child, yet for the latter he mourned still, fifteen or eighteen years after her reported decease. Weary of life, save for doing good, he took a deep liking for playing the part of a minor providence, be it said in all reverence.

Known to society as the grand-duke, otherwise Count Duren, he had humble lodgings in No. 7, Rue du Temple, as a fan-painter, plain M. Rudolph. To mask the large sums which on occasion he dispensed in charity, he was wont to give out that he was the agent of wealthy persons who trusted him in their alms-giving.

Events brought him into immediate contact with Fleur-de-Marie, and

Rigolette (who lived in his own house in the Rue du Temple).

The former he had rescued from her wretchedness and provided with a home on a farm at Bouqueval, whence she had been abducted by Chouette and comrades of hers, by orders of Jacques Ferrand, who wanted her put out of the way.

The wretches who had undertaken to drown the girl with Ferrand's housekeeper (become dangerous to him, as one aware of too many of his secrets) murdered the latter, but the former, swept from their sight by the Seine's current, had been saved by a former prison-mate of hers, a girl of twenty, so wild in manner as to have won the nickname of Louve (Wolf).

Snatched from death, the exhausted girl now lay, but a little this side of life's confines, in the house of Dr. Griffon, at Asnières, under his care and that of the Count of St. Rémy, two gentlemen who had seen her escape.

Rudolph was seeking her all this while, yet not so busily that he forgot his avenger's course. Chief among social oppressors, whose cunning baffled the law, and verified the old saying of "what is everybody's business is nobody's business," Jacques Ferrand stood.

He withheld a large sum of money, intrusted verbally to him, from its owner, the Baroness Fermont, and impoverished her and her daughter; he had seduced his servant Louise Morel, caused her imprisonment on a charge of child-murder, driving her father, a working jeweler, insane, and menacing the destruction of the whole family-but Rudolph was at hand to support them.

His cashier, Fran?ois Germain, also was in prison, thanks to him. The youth-who had saved some money, and deposited it with a banker out of town-had no sooner heard that Louise Morel's father was in debt (a means of Ferrand's triumph over the girl), than he gave her some of his employer's money, thinking to replace it with his own immediately after. But while he was away to draw the deficit from his banker's, the notary discovered the loss, and had him arrested as a thief.

The notary, whose cunning had earned him a high reputation for honesty, strictness, and parsimony, was, at this moment, therefore, at the climax of inward delight. His chief accomplice removed (his only other being the Dr. Polidori already mentioned) he believed he had nothing to fear. Louise Morel had been replaced by a new servant, much more tempting to a man of the notary's sensual cravings than that first poor victim had been.

We usher the reader, at the clerks' breakfast-time, into the notary's gloomy office.

A thing unheard-of, stupendous, marvelous! instead of the meager and unattractive stew, brought every morning to these young people by the departed housekeeper, Madame Séraphin, an enormous cold turkey, served up on an old paper box, ornamented the middle of one of the tables of the office, flanked by two loaves of bread, some Dutch cheese, and three bottles of sealed wine; an old leaden inkstand, filled with a mixture of salt and pepper, served as a salt-cellar; such was the bill of fare.

Each clerk, armed with his knife and a formidable appetite, awaited the hour of the feast with hungry impatience; some of them were raging over the absence of the head clerk, without whom they could not commence their breakfast pursuant to etiquette.

This radical change in the ordinary meals of the clerks of Jacques Ferrand announced an excessive domestic revolution.

The following conversation, eminently Boeotian (if we may be allowed to borrow this word from the witty writer who has made it popular), will throw some light upon this important question:

"Behold a turkey who never expected, when he entered into life, to appear at breakfast on the table of our governor's quill-drivers!"

"Just so; when the governor entered on the life of a notary, in like manner he never expected to give his clerks a turkey for breakfast."

"For this turkey is ours," cried Stump-in-the-Gutters, the office-boy, with greedy eyes.

"My friend you forget; this turkey must be a foreigner to you."

"And as a Frenchman, you should hate a foreigner."

"All that can be done is to give you the claws."

"Emblem of the velocity with which you run your errands."

"I think, at least, I have a right to the carcass," said the boy, murmuring.

"It might be granted; but you have no right to it, just as it was with the

Charter of 1814, which was only another carcass of liberty," said the

Mirabeau of the office.

"Apropos of carcass," said one of the party. "May the soul of Mother Séraphin rest in peace! for, since she was drowned, we are no longer condemned to eat her ever lasting hash!"

"And for a week past, the governor, instead of giving us a breakfast-"

"Allows us each forty sous a day."

"That is the reason I say: may her soul rest in peace."

"Exactly; for in her time, the old boy would never have given us the forty sous."

"It is enormous!"

"It is astonishing!"

"There is not an office in Paris-"

"In Europe."

"In the universe, where they give forty sous to a famishing clerk for his breakfast."

"Apropos of Madame Séraphin, which of you fellows has seen the new servant that takes her place?"

"The Alsatian girl whom Madame Pipelet, the porter's wife of No. 17, Rue du

Temple, the house where poor Louise lived, brought one evening?"

"Yes."

"I have not seen her yet."

"Nor I."

"Of course not; it is altogether impossible to see her, for the governor is more savage than ever to prevent our entering the pavilion in the courtyard."

"And since the porter cleans the office now, how can one get a glimpse at his Mary?"

"Pooh! I have seen her."

"You?"

"Where was that?"

"How does she look?"

"Large or small?"

"Young or old?"

"I am sure, beforehand, that she has not so good-looking a face as poor

Louise-that good girl?"

"Come, since you have seen her, how does this new servant look?"

"When I say I saw her, I have seen her cap-a very funny cap."

"What sort?"

"It was cherry color, and of velvet, I believe; something like those worn by the little broom girls."

"Like the Alsatians? it is very natural, since she is an Alsatian."

"You don't say so!"

"But I do! what is it that surprises you? The burnt child shuns the fire!"

"Chalamel! what relation between your proverb and this cap?"

"There is none."

"Why did you say it, then?"

"Because a benefit is never lost, and the dog is a friend of man!"

"Hold! If Chalamel opens his budget of proverbs, which mean nothing, we are in for it. Come, tell us what you know of this new servant."

"The day before yesterday I was out in the yard: she had her back toward one of the windows of the ground-floor."

"The yard's back?"

"What stupidity! No, the servant's. The glasses are so dirty that I could see nothing of her figure; but I could see her cherry-colored cap, and a profusion of curls, as black as jet; for she wears her hair in short curls."

"I am sure that the governor would not have seen through his spectacles as much as you did; for here you have one, as they say, who, if he remained alone with a woman on the earth, the world would soon come to an end."

"That is not astonishing. He laughs best who laughs last, and, moreover, punctuality is the politeness of kings."

"How wearisome Chalamel is when he lays himself out to it!"

"Tell me what company you keep, and I'll tell you what you are."

"Oh! how pretty!"

"As for me, I have an idea that it is superstition that stupefies the governor more and more."

"It is, perhaps, from penitence, that he gives us forty sous for our breakfast."

"The fact is, he must be crazy."

"Or sick."

"I think for the last two or three days he has been quite wild."

"Not that we see him so much. He who was, for our torment, in his cabinet from morning till night, and always at our backs, now has not, for two days, put his nose into the office."

"That is the reason the head clerk has so much to do."

"And that we are obliged to die with hunger in waiting for him."

"What a change in the office."

"Poor Germain would be much astonished if any one should say to him, 'Only fancy, my boy, the governor gives us forty sous for our breakfast;' 'Pshaw! it is impossible,' he would say. 'It is so possible that he has announced it to me, Chalamel, in my own person.' 'You are jesting.' 'I jest! This is the way it occurred: during two or three days which followed the death of Madame Séraphin, we had no breakfast at all. We liked that well enough, for no breakfast at all was better than that she gave us; but, on the other hand, our luncheon cost us money. However, we were patient, and said: "The governor has got no servant, no housekeeper, and when he gets one, we shall have to live on hash again." It wasn't so, my poor Germain: the old fellow finally employed a servant, and our breakfast was still buried in the river of oblivion. I was appointed a sort of deputy, to present to the governor the complaints of the stomach; he was with the principal clerk." I do not want to feed you in the morning," said he, in a gruff, surly tone; "my servant has no time to prepare your breakfast." "But, sir, you are bound to give us our morning meal." "Well, you may send out for your breakfast, and I will pay for it. How much do you want?-forty sous each?" added he, with some other subject evidently upon his mind, and mentioning, "forty sous," in the same manner that he would have said twenty sous, or a hundred sous. "Yes, sir," I exclaimed, "forty sous, will do," catching the ball "on the fly." "Let it be so," answered the notary; "the head clerk will take charge of the expense, and I will settle with him." Thereupon the governor shut the door in my face.' You must confess, gentleman that Germain would be astonished at the extraordinary liberality of the governor."

"Germain would say: 'The governor is out of his head.'"

"And forty sous a-head out of his pocket," said Chalamel.

"Well done! the first chemist was right who said: 'Bitter as Calomel!'"

"Seriously, I believe that the governor is sick."