Champs Elysees
He scarlet rose of battle is in full bloom. The white water - lily of fear trembles on the river of tears. The cannon hath retched fire and its lips have foamed blood. The pale horse of death stands drinking out of the Rhine, its four hoofs on the breast-bone of men who sleep their last sleep. The red clusters of human hearts are crushed in the wine-press just as the vineyards of Moselle and Hockheimer are ripening. Chassepot and mitrailleuse have answered the needle-gun; and there is all along the lines the silence of those who will never speak again.
But Paris has for an interval, at least, recovered from her recent depression. Yes-
31- 437 terday I stood at the foot of the Egyptian redgranite obelisk, dug out three thousand four hundred years ago, and from the top of which, at an elevation of seventy-two feet, the ages of the past look down upon the splendors of the present. On either side the obelisk is a fountain with six jets, each tossing Into the bronze basin above; a seventh fountain, at still greater elevation, overflowing and coming down to meet them. Ribbons of rainbow flung on the air: golden rays of sunlight interwoven with silver skeins of water, while the wind drives the loom. Tritons, nereids, genii, dolphins, and winged children disporting themselves, and floods clapping their hands.
From the foot of the obelisk, looking off to the south, is the Palace of the Legislature — Its last touch of repairs having cost four million dollars — its gilded gates, and Corinthian columns, and statues of Justice, and Commerce, and Art, and Navigation — a building grand with Vernet’s fresco, and Cortot’s sculpture, and Delacroix’s allegories of art, and the memory of Lamartlne’s eloquence; within it the hard face of stone soft with gobelin tapestry, and arabesque, and the walls curtained with velvet of crimson and gleaming gold.
From the foot of the obelisk, glancing to the north, the church of the Madeleine comes into sight. Its glories lifted up on the shoulders of fifty - two Corinthian columns, swinging against the dazed vision its huge brazen doors, Its walls breaking Into innumerable fragments of beauty, each piece a sculptured wonder: a king, an apostle, an archangel, or a Christ. The three cupolas against the sky, great doxologles In stone. The whole building white, beautiful, stupendous — the frozen prayer of a nation.
From the foot of the obelisk, looking east through a long aisle of elms, chestnuts, and palms, Is the palace of the Tullerles, confronting you with one thousand feet of facade, and tossed up at either side Into Imposing pavilions, and sweeping back Into the most brilliant picture-galleries of all the world, where the French masters look upon the Flemish, and the black marble of the Pyrenees frowns upon the drifted snow of Italian statuary: a palace poising its pinnacles in the sun, and spreading* out balustrades of braided granite. Its inside walls adorned with blaze of red velvet coolingdown into damask overshot with green silk. Palace of wild and terrific memories, orgies of drunken kings, and display of coronation festivity. Frightful Catharine de Medicis looked out of those windows. There, Maria Antoinette gazed up toward heaven through the dark lattice of her own broken heart. Into those doors rushed the Revolutionary mobs. On that roof the Angel of Death alighted and flapped its black wings on its way to smite in a day one hundred thousand souls. Majestic, terrible, beautiful, horrible, sublime palace of the Tuileries. The brightness of a hundred fete days sparkle in its fountains! The gore of ten thousand butcheries redden the upholstery! Standing at the foot of the obelisk, we have looked toward the north, and the south, and the east. There is but one way more to look. Stretching awa)’ to the west, beyond the sculptured horses that seem all a-quiver with life from nostril to fetlock, and rearing till you fear the groom will no longer be able to keep
CHAMPS ELYSiES. 44I
them from dashing off the pedestal, is the Champs Elysdes, the great artery through which rolls the life of Parisian hilarity. It is, perhaps, the widest street in the world. You see two long lines of carriages, one flowing this way, the other that, filled with the merriment of the gayest city under the sun. There they go! viscounts and porters, cab-drivers of glazed hat taking passengers at two francs an hour, and coachman with rosetted hat, and lavender breeches, his coat-tails flung over the back of the high seat — a very constellation of brass buttons. Tramp, and rumble, and clatter! Two wheels, four wheels, one sorrel, two sorrels! Fast horse’s mouth by twisted bit drawn tight into the chest, and slow horse*s head hung out at long distance from the body, his feet too lazy to keep up. Crack! crack! go a hundred whips in the strong grasp of the charioteers, warning foot-passengers to clear the way. Click! click! go the swords of the mounted horse-guards as they dash past sashed, feathered, and epauletted.
On the broad pavements of this avenue all nations meet and mingle. This is a Chinese with hair in genuine pig - tail twist, and this a Turk with trowsers enough for seven. Here, an Enghshman built up solid from the foundation, buttressed with strength; the apotheosization of roast-beef and plum-pudding; you can tell by his looks that he never ate anything that disagreed with him. Here, an American so thin he fails to cast a shadow. There, a group of children playing blind-man’s buff, and, yonder, men at foot-ball, with a circle of a hundred people surrounding them. Old harpers playing their harps. Boys fiddling. Women with fountains of soda-water strapped to their back, and six cups dangling at their side, and tinkling a tiny bell to let the people know where they may get refreshment. Here, a circle of fifteen hobby-horses poised on one pivot, where girls in white dresses, and boys in coat of many colors swing round the circle. Puff of a hundred segars. Peddler with a score of balloons to a string sending them up into the air, and willing for four sous to make any boy happy. Parrots holding up their ugliness by one claw, and swearing at passers - by in bad French. Canaries serenading the sunlight. Bagpipers with instruments in full screech. “Punch and Judy,” the unending joke of European cities, which is simply two doll-babies beating each other.
Passing on, you come upon another circle of fountains, six in number — small but beautiful, infantile fountains, hardly born before they die, rocked in cradle of crystal, then buried in sarcophagus of pearl. The water rises only a short distance and bends over, like the heads of ripe grain, as though the water-gods had been reaping their harvest, and here had stacked their sheaves. And now we find toycarriages drawn by four goats with bells, and children riding, a boy of four years drawing the rein, mountebanks tumbling on the grass, jugglers with rings that turn into serpents, and bottles that spit white rabbits, and tricks that make the auditor’s hat, passed up, breed rats.
On your way through the street, you wander into grottos, where, over colored rocks, the water falls, now becoming blue as the sea, now green as a pond, and now, without miracle, it is turned into wine. There are maiden -hair trees, and Irish yews, and bamboo, and magnolias, and banks of azaleas, and hollies, and you go through a Red Sea of geraniums and dahlias dry-shod. You leave on either hand concert-castles, and party-colored booths, and kiosks inviting to repose, till you come to the foot of the Arc de Triomphe, from the foot of which radiate eleven great avenues, any one of which might well be a national pride, and all of them a-rumble with pomp and wealth, and the shock of quick and resonant laughter. On opposite sides of the archway are two angels, leaning toward each other till their trumpets wellnigh touch, blowing the news of a hundred victories. Surely never before or since was hard stone ever twisted into such wreaths, or smoothed into such surfaces. Up and down frieze and spandrel are alti-rilievi with flags of granite that seem to quiver in the wind, and helmets that sit soft as velvet on warrior’s brow; and there are lips of stone that look as if they might speak, and spears that look as if they might pierce, and wounds that look as if they might bleed, and eagles that look as if they might fly. Here stands an angel of war mighty enough to have been just hurled out of heaven. On one side of the Arch, Peace Is celebrated by the sculptor with sheaves of plenty, and chaplets of honor, and palms of tridmph. At a great height, Austerlitz is again enacted, and horse and horsemen and artillery and gunners stand out as though some horror of battle had chilled them all into stone.
By the time that you have mounted the steps, and stand at the top of the Arch, the evening lamps begin a running fire on all the streets. The trees swing lanterns, and the eleven avenues concentrating at the foot of the Arch pour their brightness to your feet a very chorus of fire. Your eye treads all the way back to the Tuileries on bubbles of flame, and stopping half-way the distance to read, in wierd and bewitching contrivance of gas-light, an inscription with a harp of fire at the top and an arrow of fire at the bottom, the charmed words of every Frenchman,