The Ways of Men [31]
succeeded in snatching a handful of the gold fringe from the throne as it was carried by, an act of prowess that repaid him for all his troubles and fatigue.
"I passed the greater part of forty-eight hours on our balcony, watching the mob marching by, singing LA MARSEILLAISE, and camping at night in the streets. It was all I could do to tear myself away from the window long enough to eat and write in my journal.
"There was no Avenue de l'Opera then. The trip from the boulevards to the Palais-Royal had to be made by a long detour across the Place Vendome (where, by the bye, a cattle market was held) or through a labyrinth of narrow, bad-smelling little streets, where strangers easily lost their way. Next to the boulevards, the Palais-Royal was the centre of the elegant and dissipated life in the capital. It was there we met of an afternoon to drink chocolate at the `Rotonde,' or to dine at `Les Trois Freres Provencaux,' and let our husbands have a try at the gambling tables in the Passage d'Orleans.
"No one thought of buying jewelry anywhere else. It was from the windows of its shops that the fashions started on their way around the world. When Victoria as a bride was visiting Louis Philippe, she was so fascinated by the aspect of the place that the gallant French king ordered a miniature copy of the scene, made IN PAPIER-MACHE, as a present for his guest, a sort of gigantic dolls' house in which not only the palace and its long colonnades were reproduced, but every tiny shop and the myriad articles for sale were copied with Chinese fidelity. Unfortunately the pear-headed old king became England's uninvited guest before this clumsy toy was finished, so it never crossed the Channel, but can be seen to-day by any one curious enough to examine it, in the Musee Carnavalet.
"Few of us realize that the Paris of Charles X. and Louis Philippe would seem to us now a small, ill-paved, and worse- lighted provincial town, with few theatres or hotels, communicating with the outer world only by means of a horse- drawn `post,' and practically farther from London than Constantinople is to-day. One feels this isolation in the literature of the time; brilliant as the epoch was, the horizon of its writers was bounded by the boulevards and the Faubourg Saint-Germain."
Dumas says laughingly, in a letter to a friend: "I have never ventured into the unexplored country beyond the Bastille, but am convinced that it shelters wild animals and savages." The wit and brains of the period were concentrated into a small space. Money-making had no more part in the programme of a writer then than an introduction into "society." Catering to a foreign market and snobbishness were undreamed-of degradations. Paris had not yet been turned into the FOIRE DU MONDE that she has since become, with whole quarters given over to the use of foreigners, - theatres, restaurants, and hotels created only for the use of a polyglot population that could give lessons to the people around Babel's famous "tower."
Chapter 13 - Some American Husbands
UNTIL the beginning of this century men played the BEAU ROLE in life's comedy. As in the rest of the animal world, our males were the brilliant members of the community, flaunting their gaudy plumage at home and abroad, while the women-folk remained in seclusion, tending their children, directing the servants, or ministering to their lords' comfort.
In those happy days the husband ruled supreme at his own fireside, receiving the homage of the family, who bent to his will and obeyed his orders.
During the last century, however, the "part" of better half has become less and less attractive in America, one prerogative after another having been whisked away by enterprising wives. Modern Delilahs have yearly snipped off more and more of Samson's luxuriant curls, and added those ornaments to their own COIFFURES, until in the majority of families the husband finds himself reduced to a state of bondage compared with which the biblical
"I passed the greater part of forty-eight hours on our balcony, watching the mob marching by, singing LA MARSEILLAISE, and camping at night in the streets. It was all I could do to tear myself away from the window long enough to eat and write in my journal.
"There was no Avenue de l'Opera then. The trip from the boulevards to the Palais-Royal had to be made by a long detour across the Place Vendome (where, by the bye, a cattle market was held) or through a labyrinth of narrow, bad-smelling little streets, where strangers easily lost their way. Next to the boulevards, the Palais-Royal was the centre of the elegant and dissipated life in the capital. It was there we met of an afternoon to drink chocolate at the `Rotonde,' or to dine at `Les Trois Freres Provencaux,' and let our husbands have a try at the gambling tables in the Passage d'Orleans.
"No one thought of buying jewelry anywhere else. It was from the windows of its shops that the fashions started on their way around the world. When Victoria as a bride was visiting Louis Philippe, she was so fascinated by the aspect of the place that the gallant French king ordered a miniature copy of the scene, made IN PAPIER-MACHE, as a present for his guest, a sort of gigantic dolls' house in which not only the palace and its long colonnades were reproduced, but every tiny shop and the myriad articles for sale were copied with Chinese fidelity. Unfortunately the pear-headed old king became England's uninvited guest before this clumsy toy was finished, so it never crossed the Channel, but can be seen to-day by any one curious enough to examine it, in the Musee Carnavalet.
"Few of us realize that the Paris of Charles X. and Louis Philippe would seem to us now a small, ill-paved, and worse- lighted provincial town, with few theatres or hotels, communicating with the outer world only by means of a horse- drawn `post,' and practically farther from London than Constantinople is to-day. One feels this isolation in the literature of the time; brilliant as the epoch was, the horizon of its writers was bounded by the boulevards and the Faubourg Saint-Germain."
Dumas says laughingly, in a letter to a friend: "I have never ventured into the unexplored country beyond the Bastille, but am convinced that it shelters wild animals and savages." The wit and brains of the period were concentrated into a small space. Money-making had no more part in the programme of a writer then than an introduction into "society." Catering to a foreign market and snobbishness were undreamed-of degradations. Paris had not yet been turned into the FOIRE DU MONDE that she has since become, with whole quarters given over to the use of foreigners, - theatres, restaurants, and hotels created only for the use of a polyglot population that could give lessons to the people around Babel's famous "tower."
Chapter 13 - Some American Husbands
UNTIL the beginning of this century men played the BEAU ROLE in life's comedy. As in the rest of the animal world, our males were the brilliant members of the community, flaunting their gaudy plumage at home and abroad, while the women-folk remained in seclusion, tending their children, directing the servants, or ministering to their lords' comfort.
In those happy days the husband ruled supreme at his own fireside, receiving the homage of the family, who bent to his will and obeyed his orders.
During the last century, however, the "part" of better half has become less and less attractive in America, one prerogative after another having been whisked away by enterprising wives. Modern Delilahs have yearly snipped off more and more of Samson's luxuriant curls, and added those ornaments to their own COIFFURES, until in the majority of families the husband finds himself reduced to a state of bondage compared with which the biblical