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Children came, whose courage would carry them no nearer than the galérie's end or front edge, where they lurked and hovered, or gazed through the balustrade, or leaned against a galérie post and rubbed one brown bare foot upon another and crowded each other's shoulders without assignable cause, or lopped down upon the grass and gazed from a distance. Little conversation was offered.
Then he darted back to rolls and coffee; beamed on the waiters, gave them fat five franc pieces merely for beaming in return; and arrived in the Galerie Charles Trois just as the shop windows were opening radiant Christmas eyes. The first visit he paid was to the florist's; and to save time in choosing he simply said, "I'll take all those things you have in the window, please."
Wherever he went an agent of detective police followed him. At the Cafe de Paris as he took his aperitif on the terrasse the man sat at a table near, idly smoking a cigarette and glancing at an illustrated paper on a wooden holder. In the gardens, in the Rooms, in the Galerie, everywhere the same insignificant little man haunted him. Soon after luncheon he met Dorise and her mother in the Rooms.
Among other salons and galleries, thrown open, was the enormous Perspective of the "Grande Galerie des Glaces," lighted up on that occasion with no less than four thousand wax candles, reflected and repeated by all the mirrors, so that the effect was almost dazzling. The grand suite of salons was thronged with masques, in every conceivable costume. There was not a single room deserted.
As to Cavour, he thought him a greater man even than Bismarck; and this from a man so intimate with the German chancellor was a testimony of no small value. One of these reminiscences I have given elsewhere. As to his recollections of Versailles, he was present at the proclamation of the Empire in the Galerie des Glaces, and described the scene to me very vividly.
And Queen Marie Antoinette, whose dungeon was under the present cells, was conducted to the presence of the Revolutionary Tribunal, which held its sittings in the place where the Court of Appeals now performs its solemn functions, up a horrible flight of steps, now never used, in the very thickness of the wall on which the Galerie Marchande is built.
The empress became resigned and accompanied by Madame Le Breton, Metternich and Nigra started for the Pavilion de Flore, passing through the Galerie de Musée and the Galerie d'Apollon, finally leaving by the gate of the Louvre, which is opposite Saint Germain l'Auxerrois. The empress was at last out of the palace, but not yet out of danger.
Then conscripts, in clumsy, ill-fitting uniforms, tread noisily over the shining parqueterie floors, and burgesses gossip amicably in the dazzling Galerie des Glaces, where each morning courtiers were wont to await the uprising of their king. But on the weekdays visitors are of the rarest.
"Quand j'aurai de la peine aux Carmelites," says unhappy Louise, about to retire from these magnificent courtiers and their grand Galerie des Glaces, "je me souviendrai de ce que ces gens la m'ont fait souffrir!" A troop of Bossuets inveighing against the vanities of courts could not preach such an affecting sermon.
As I am now on a chapter devoted to usefulness, I must recommend my readers to get well and comfortably shod, particularly if they have any intention of visiting the monuments and antiquities I have described, for which purpose they must procure their shoes in Paris, the leather being prepared in such a manner as to render it infinitely more soft and flexible than it is in England, consequently one can walk twice the distance, without tiring, in French shoes, than one can in English; hence with the former all the tortures of new shoes are never felt, being fully as easy as an old pair of the latter, and for this purpose no one can better supply the article desired, than M. Deschamps, No. 14, Galerie d'Orléans, Palais-Royal, who stands so high in the estimation of my countrymen, that he is obliged to go to London twice a year to supply their demands.
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