03.12. Paris
Chapter 12 Lingual Difficulties in France.
-- The Cafes -- Vendome Column -- Louvre Palace and Tuilleries Gardens -- Sainte Chapelle -- Palace of Justice -- How the Lawyers Dress -- Notre Dame -- The Sabbath -- Mission Work in Paris The experience that comes to one in landing in a foreign country, where an unknown tongue is spoken, is peculiar, and not one of unmixed enjoyment. As the white chalk hills or cliffs of Dover sink beneath the horizon, the English language, except in sporadic cases, goes with them, and as the foot presses the soil of France, and the ear takes in the rapid clatter of tongues from under moustached lips, the traveler begins to feel his loneliness and his comparative helplessness in a forcible way. Henceforth signs and gestures must be depended upon, while the tongue that has been so often relied on, and has answered to a thousand demands, is now relegated to a long rest.
It can do little or nothing more. It is, so to speak, laid on the shelf; or, more elegantly, it lies down on its velvety cushion, leans against two shining rows of ivory, while the eyes and ears stand guard, and do what they can for the resting monarch. Whenever this reposing monarch, or member, arose and asserted himself in France, he got into trouble. Scores of times full of self-confidence, he sprang up with a bound and rushed forward into the verbal affray; but as often he sank back, discouraged, disgusted and defeated. On one occasion I adopted the happy expedient of speaking very volubly in English, with a strong French accent. A very common mistake! What happened then? Just this: that the descendant of Charlemagne turned and poured upon me such a flood of "omnia Gallia," without its being divisa in tres partes," that I was almost lifted from my feet. We parted, both being thoroughly mystified. But one feeling of exultation I bore away with me was, that if he had mystified me, I had also thoroughly confounded him.
After being in Paris a couple of days I became bolder in regard to my lingual surroundings. So I stepped out to purchase some candles one evening, neglecting to obtain the French phrase from the hotel clerk, who spoke English. Entering into a store that contained a little of everything, I asked the female shopkeeper for a candle in plain Anglo-Saxon. She smilingly proffered various articles. I shook my head and fell back on my French accent. She grew more animated, and dived into her show cases for things I never dreamed of, nor would ever need. The battle became more interesting. It was impossible to tell which side would finally win. Finally a brilliant idea struck me. Raising my hand, I scratched an imaginary match in the air, and applied it to an equally fanciful candle. Her face at once lighted up. I thought I had conquered, when, lo! she stooped down and, from a shelf near the floor, lifted and handed me something that looked like the machine that is used for wooden scroll-work. I took a seat in despair. Then she smiled and I smiled. Then I left.
She looked foolish, and so did I, and felt foolish besides. Further down the street I entered a shop where the owner understood English; but I was nearly an hour in getting the candles. The first thing that strikes the tourist in entering Paris is the cafe system. The pavements are fairly lined with small tables and chairs, where the people are eating ices and sherbets, drinking wine, or partaking of their meals, according to the hour of the day. At night especially, upon the larger avenues and the boulevards the throng of laughing, chatting, drinking, eating people at these little white-topped tables is simply immense, requiring a most sinuous course in some places for the pedestrian to move along. Sunday night, as I passed to and from church, the crowd was, if possible, even larger. Vehicles of every description were flashing hither and thither up the broad thoroughfare; merriment and conversation rose and fell like waves along the pavement, crowded with nicely-dressed men and women; wine glasses were clinking, and through the leaves of the overarching trees the electric light and the moonlight, in strange companionship, fell in checkered, quivering light and shadow upon the sitting an d moving groups beneath. These scenes on the week nights declare powerfully the absence of the home-life in Paris; but when beheld on the Sabbath, it teaches something sadder and more awful still, and that is, a city without God. It needs no prophet to affirm, after beholding such scenes and others of a darker nature, that, as a people, they are yet to taste in judgment "the wine of the wrath of God." God vindicates his holy day and law, and history is one long confirmation of the fact.
One of the first visits I paid was to the Vendome Column. It is about two or three blocks from the river Seine, on the upper or eastern bank. The column stands in a square, through which only one street passes, from north to south. It was constructed out of fourteen hundred cannon taken from the enemies of France by Napoleon. This was one of the best things that Bonaparte ever did, to change implements of war into an inoffensive pillar of iron. If he had taken fourteen hundred more of his own and built another column, then would he, indeed, have been famous. When the Communists, in 1871, with cable and windlass, pulled it down, it was broken into fifty-six different pieces; but the government has had it all recast, and so the monument stands as it did in the time of the great Emperor. The Louvre Palace is near by, and situated directly on the banks of the Seine. It occupies three sides of a long square; not such a square as we have in New Orleans, but one equal to six of ours. The unoccupied, or western, side was finally filled up by the construction of the Tuilleries Palace. It was in this last-named building that Napoleon lived. It was destroyed in 1871 by the Communists, and a few years ago the ruins were all removed, and the vacant space is now beautified with flowers, walks, and statuary.
If a person stands in the center of the broad walk of this garden and looks west, he will be in a line with some beautiful, wonderful, and historic objects. Back of him will be the vast Louvre Palace; back of him, only nearer, will be the place where the beautiful Tuilleries Palace once stood; in front of him is the broad graveled walk, one hundred feet wide, that divides the old Tuilleries gardens -- part of it in flowers and statuary, and part of it in trees. Farther still in the distance you see two great fountains; beyond these an obelisk of Egypt, standing in the center of the Place de la Concorde, where the guillotine once did such dreadful work; still farther on stretches the Champs Elysees, a beautiful avenue of a mile in length; and finally, at the end of the avenue, and closing the view, the arch of Triumph, erected by the great Napoleon. I stood and looked in the direction I have indicated one Saturday evening, near the hour of sunset. He who could not think and feel under such circumstances could properly be wondered at.
Half of the Louvre Palace is occupied by government offices, and the other half is used as a museum. Here are antiquities and relics beyond number, statues by the hundred, and miles of paintings. I walked, looking at them until I was weary, not in eye so much as in feet. I was shown the window from which the Bourbon king fired on the Huguenots, and in full view of the window is the tower whose bell gave the signal for the massacre to begin. In the church called Sainte Chapelle I stood examining the stained windows for which it is famous, when my attention was called to the fact that under the stone slabs where I stood were the bodies of Massillon and Fenelon -- one the most eloquent, and the other the holiest man that ever lived in France. With what sudden interest did I look down, and how careful and reverential became my steps. No one ever here seems to mind walking on sepulchres; but, for my life, I cannot get accustomed to the practice. The Palace of Justice, where all the courts are held, and where the lawyers congregate and perambulate in a large, central marble hall, next claimed my attention. I noticed that every one wore a black cap similar in shape to the tourist or traveler’s cap, and a black gown that descended to within four inches of the floor. As soon as a lawyer arrives he doffs his shining beaver, or more ordinary-looking hat, and dons at once the cap and gown that await him in a general dressing-room in the hall. The custom struck me as most excellent. It was not only a very becoming costume for every one, but it gave a magisterial look, and, above all, obliterated the distinctions of wealth declared by clothing. I could not help but think that when these lawyers arose to plead their cases in court, the fact that all were alike in dress must necessarily have a good effect on jury, and even judge. A lawyer’s shabby coat sometimes hurts him in the United States; but such a thing cannot happen in Paris very well, because o f this happy expedient. The church of Notre Dame is on the Island of Paris. It faces west, with two great square towers in front. The vaulting of the nave is one hundred and ten feet high, supported by seventy-five large pillars. You can get some idea of the size of this cathedral when I tell you it can accommodate a congregation of twenty-five thousand people. It was this church that in the Revolution was changed into a Temple of Reason, and surmounted with the figure of a woman.
Napoleon restored it as soon as he came into power. It was in this church that the Corsican was crowned emperor of the French by Pius; or, rather, he crowned himself, inasmuch as he took the crown from Pius and placed it on his own head, and then to turned and crowned Josephine with his own hand. What a stir and talk this act must have created in Paris and Rome and all the world! I looked with great interest on the spot which I had often seen in pictures. The paintings were faithful, for the whole place was familiar to my mind. The three chairs, in which Napoleon and the Pope and Josephine sat, are still there; but the glory and pageantry of that day is gone, and the Pope and the Emperor and the Empress have moldered into dust and ashes. Very brightly did the light fall through the stained glass upon them on this day of triumph. I saw the light descend like a golden glory, and fall with almost perpendicular ray upon the same place. But the kneeling figures were not there and of all the twenty-five thousand people who filled the place at the time, and gazed breathlessly upon the scene, not one is left. Is it not pitiful to see men greater than all forms of material, strength and magnificence, passing away, while such things as chairs and walls and stone pillars remain? The next day was the Sabbath. On that day I cease traveling and sight-seeing. The time is spent in my room, and in attendance upon as many church services as I can well manage. In the morning I attended service at Notre Dame. There were two hundred people in an auditorium that seats or accommodates twenty-five thousand. Let the brethren that pine over empty pews take heart. Handing a church functionary two sous for the privilege of sitting near the chancel, I took a seat and endeavored to draw good from what was going on. The organ pealed away up somewhere among the pillars, the priest ah’d and oh’d his way along in the intoning, the little boys rung the bells; a good deal of stooping, bowing, and walking about took place; some rapid responsive reading in Latin between the half-dozen priests in the chancel, and then all was over. The priests and little boys in white glided noiselessly away, and disappeared in a spectral manner among the granite columns and monuments and statues of the shadowy cathedral. Then a man in uniform came and closed the chancel gate with a bang that filled the church with echoes; and the congregation melted away. A few remained, staring vacantly at the silent and deserted altar. They looked dazed, or may be they thought the little boys would come back and ring their bells once more. But they did not -- for the show was over.
I tarried with the few for another purpose. The followers of Peter had not fed the sheep that day. We were still hungry. A tinkling bell does not satisfy the soul; and worship in an unknown tongue, and that a dead tongue, does not profit says the Bible. But the Lord said to the Samaritan woman: "The time is coming when men shall worship the Father everywhere." And so I opened my Bible, and in the dim light of the cathedral read the Word of Life and rejoiced in the presence and fellowship of the Savior. In the evening I went to three distinct religious services. Mr. McAll, who has about forty mission stations in Paris, is now away for two month’s rest and recreation. The Congregationalist church is also doing a good work in the missionary line, while the Wesleyan Methodist Church has, at least, twenty mission stations in this great field. I was struck with the intelligent audience at one of the latter-named places. The Congregationalist minister informed me that the one method open to them of saving the people of Paris is through pastoral labor and personal contact, and then drawing them into halls of religious worship. No street meetings of a religious character are allowed in Paris. To attempt a harangue of this kind on the street would quickly result in arrest and imprisonment. And so the work will be long and difficult, necessarily.
Meantime the vast audience we crave to save sits Sunday evenings on the brilliantly lighted boulevards, laughing, chatting, smoking, and emptying wine glasses, while the churches are empty, the holy day of God desecrated, and Eternity forgotten.
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