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files of French newspapers by us, whose contents never cease to astonish us by the familiar details they give of the life of persons moving in Paris society.

It is true M. Veron has some salient points of character, which, in the peculiar constitution of Paris, invite attacks. He is rather eccentric, he is somewhat vain of his luxury, he seems to spread before the public his fortune, and his tastes, and his free habits. Every day while the Rue de Rivoli and Rue de Castiglione are filled with the throng which flows through them between noon and four o'clock, M. Veron in his robe de chambre leans negligently on his balcony, and enjoys the animated scene. In the evening he is always to be seen at a table in the corner of the second salon of the Café de Paris, surrounded by some of the most celebrated writers, or artists, or wits of the day: M. Scribe, the dramatist; M. Jules Janin, and M. Armand Bertin of the Journal des Debats, M. Malitourne of the Constitutionnel, M. Eugene Delacroix, the painter; M. Halévy, and M. Auber, and M. Meyerbeer, the composers; M. Gilbert des Voisins, the witty husband of the famous Taglioni, and some fifty others of the celebrated persons of Paris, alternately, for he gives one of these dinner parties every day, having commonly three guests. After dinner he retires to his box at the Grand Opera, or at the Opera Comique; and is thus in public nearly all the day long. Besides, M. Veron's pug nose, and obesity, and enormous shirt-collar have been made very ridiculous, by one of those statuette caricatures, by M. Dantan, the sculptor (who has amused his leisure with making laughable statuettes of all the celebrated persons of France), who, not content with exaggerating them in a droll manner, encumbers M. Veron's hands with a huge umbrella, a clyster-syringe, and a box of quack cough paste (an allusion to M. Veron's profession, and to a report which ascribes to him the invention, and original proprietorship of the quack remedy). As all of the satirical papers of Paris have adopted M. Dantan's statuette as their model of M. Veron, and as they attack him daily, the publicity in which he lives is increased in intensity, by his never losing his personality (for every body knows him by sight), while their pens and their pencils have exaggerated his harmless eccentricities to ridicule. M. Veron lost the power and the position his place at the head of the Constitutionnel gave him, he found himself greatly abandoned, and especially before the Agua dos' suit against him was compromised,

After

and while it seemed to menace him with dishonor, the number of his daily guests and flatterers was considerably diminished. His time hung heavy on his hands. He began to experience the isolation unmarried men experience even in Paris. Thus he was led to write his memoirs. We have now exhibited, as well as we may, the character and the life of the person who presents himself to conduct us through the varying phases of French society, from the end of the Empire down to some time last year. We would fain hope that our reader has not deemed the space too long, which we have given to M. Veron. could not well have been curtailed, and have given the reader the necessary knowledge of the previous history, and the character of the historian:-" The revolutions which this half century has seen," says M. Veron, "are not only the revolutions of governments, and of dynasties, but they have caused the profoundest changes in our ideas, in all of our philosophy, in our literature, in our moeurs, and even in our hygiene." Let us turn to his memoirs.

It

We have nowhere read a sadder picture of the days of the Empire, whose effulgence so dazzles our eyes; we cannot readily conceive the social state of the country whose flag was floating on every public edifice of western continental Europe, whose polished tongue was the official language of every court, whose admirable Code Napoleon protected property, and reputation, and life every where. It would, however, have required no great deal of reflection to have deduced that as, of necessity, the butchers of a hundred fields, living on blood, and familiar with murder, and other scenes of violence which follow war as inevitably as the night the day, could not have been softened to courtiers by the first whiff of the perfumed air of a flower-decked drawing-room. Our utter ignorance of the state of society during the Consulate and the Empire, is partly owing to the complete severance of relations between England and France (on the former we were mainly dependent for all we know about Europe during that period), and partly that the French wrote all the history we have about their nation during that time, and because the gigantic genius of Napoleon completely absorbed all attention, as we have just said. But who is there that does not feel every drop of blood in his veins tingle, when he is told (and by a favorable witness, who, in his blind admiration of the extraordinary man who rescued France from anarchy, seems insensible of the enormities he is narrating),-who is

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there, we say, that does not feel every drop of blood in his veins tingle when he is told that during the time of the Empire, officers entered the public places and without saying a word snatched newspapers from the hands of civilians, and that at the theatres they pushed the latter aside and entered before them in the rudest manner, while the civilians were forced to bear these impertinent insults? When he hears that if a dishonored husband dared to complain of his wrongs he was thrown out of the window; and that it not unfrequently happened that when the adulterous loves of these martial heroes happened to give them dissatisfaction, nothing was more common than to correct them with the horsewhip? Who can suppress the sentiments of a profound disgust while hearing that it was deemed a great talent to have a digestive apparatus which could withstand any amount of food; that many men had obtained lucrative offices after swallowing at one breakfast a hundred dozen oysters; that General Dumesnil gave an oyster-breakfast in the cellars of Les Trois Frères Provençaux to all the officers of his regiment; all the cellars were illuminated, and upon every heap of bottles were placed tickets indicating their age and their growth; and that all ages and growths were emptied before the officers of his regiment quitted the cellars; that none but herculean men were deemed handsome, that broad shoulders, a prominent belly, and "luxuriant" calves, were a sure passport to masculine and to feminine favor; that more than one literary man of the Empire owed his literary fame and fortune to an ample and well made leg; that an excellent dancer was assured of success in the army or in the diplomatic corps; that rope dancers were the favorite amusers of the public. What uncontrollable indignation and contempt take possession of even the most sluggish mind while hearing that it was a common occurrence, and deemed no reproach to a young man of the best society, to live at the expense of the woman (invariably a married woman) with whom he was on a criminal footing; nay, that he would task his ingenuity to contrive new expedients of procuring money from her and to lavish on his other pleasures; and descending to such expedients as these: a favorite way with one of these persons was to give orders to his servant to burst into his mistress's boudoir while he was in the midst of a most af

fectionate and a most impassioned protestation of love, and to say: The constables (he had taken care beforehand to hire three or four and to post them in the street) are coming to arrest Monsieur le Comte for a note for twenty-five thousand francs. The poor duped woman manages to procure the twenty-five thousand francs; and the shrewd servant receives a handsome commission from his master. Another of these fellows engaged his physician to be his confederate: I wish you would say to Madame *** that you find me greatly changed, and that you cannot account for my sadness or my unusual thoughtfulness. The physician lied as his friend desired him; Madame *** was greatly annoyed; she could not sleep, until by falling on her knees, and weeping and imploring her lover, she extorted his secret: I have some creditors, and my family whom I refuse to have any thing to do with, places insuperable obstacles in the way of my selling some of my extensive landed estate; they even prevent my mortgaging it. And what shall be said of this paternal homily addressed by a wellknown person, who made a large fortune in more than one trade during the Directory and the earlier days of the Empire. It would appear that his son, who had run largely in debt, avowed to his father that his creditors' claims on him were for a hundred thousand francs. How have you managed to spend a hundred thousand francs? Why, father, my cab, my mistresses. What, mis

tresses! Spend money on mistresses at your age! In my day, persons of your age, sir, made their mistresses pay for their cab, and spend money on them. M. Veron also mentions a celebrated author of the "books" of Operas Comiques, as saying to a common friend: I am going to cut my old hag! my last piece has made a woman desperately in love with me. From the third story, I am going to the first, and she is going to give me a cabriolet.

*

The state of social opinion exhibited by these anecdotes (whose authenticity has not been challenged for a moment) is in such harsh conflict with every principle of religion and honor, and with even the most elementary notions of what we have been in the habit of regarding as the foundations of self-respect and delicacy, and common honesty, and of the true relations of the different sexes and several stages of life, and of the paternal

* Our readers are aware that in Paris families live in stories or flats, a good many families living in the same house. The most aristocratic habitation is the first floor (our second floor).

duties, we do not feel ashamed of ourselves or of our language, to confess we are utterly at a loss for the appropriate accents which might express the storm of indignation, and pity, and loathing, and contempt which they have excited.

M. Veron publishes several contemporary letters which give striking pictures of the course of Napoleon's life:

"Lefebvre proposed introducing me to the Consul. . I confess I was frightened, but his (Napoleon's) affable manner soon put me at ease; he said: I have heard about you; I am glad to see you, come and dine with me to-morrow. So I shall go and dine with him to-day, when I shall examine with greater case that extraordinary man. He works eighteen hours a day. He sees his ministers only at night: the night is long, he says. He never goes to bed before four o'clock in the morning; he holds six or seven councils of state every decade, and discusses there himself all objects of administration with a precision and a clearness which astonish the most skilful persons there. The decadi is given to rather more repose; he passes that day in the country; Mme. Chabaud dined with him day before yesterday; there was a singular assortment of guests: the Turkish ambassador, two chiefs of the pacified Chouans, senators, legislators, painters, poets, and his very large family. Such are his pleasures; day before yesterday, they remained an hour at the table, but commonly he ends his meal in twenty minutes.. I reached the Luxembourg rather late; they were at table, I saluted the Consul; he pointed me to a place. Twenty plates were set at the table, but we were only eight, including his step-daughter (afterwards Queen Hortense) and his brother. Bonaparte was in a bad humor; he did not speak until towards the end of the dinner, when he talked about Italy. He cats rapidly and he eats a great deal, especially of pastry. The dishes were simple, but delightfully cooked. There was only one service, composed of ten dishes, which was followed

by a dessert. We were only eighteen minutes at table. Bonaparte was waited on by two young Mamelukes, and two small Abyssinians. It is not true, he eats only dishes prepared expressly for him. He eat, among other dishes, of a mushroom pic, of which I cat very heartily, for you know I love them. He drinks a very little wine, but he drinks it pure; he got up as soon as he had finished his dessert. We went into the drawing-room. He said a few words to me, about the situation of my

regiment, while we were taking coffee, and then he went at once into his study; the whole affair did not last longer than twenty-five or thirty minutes."

We must, however, return to other scenes of that day. Our readers have seen how thoroughly corrupted society had become. This corruption pervaded all the nation. Every thing too was unhinged. France was a great hive swarming with adventurers. None perhaps were more meanly corrupt, and none are more characteristic of the period than the furnishers of the army. The most astute and the most successful of these appears to have been a certain M. Paulée, who was born in Douai, and where he was for some time employed as a servant in one of the taverns of the place, from which he rose to be the butler of the inn, made his first fortunate step in marrying the cook of the establishment, by which connection he became quite an important character, and it became worth the while of his customers to court his favor, if they were partial to good dishes and to choice wines. The inn was frequented by a good many officers of the army, and by a good many grain dealers. He won the confidence of those who had grain to sell, as of those who wished to purchase. Influential generals patronized him, and gave him small orders for grain; his affairs prospered and increased in importance; he took a partner, a M. Vanlerberghe; he bought largely of ecclesiastical and national estates sold in the department of the Nord, and which he had selected so judiciously, it was estimated that his income was $100,000 per annum ; the marriage portion he gave his son was worth $50,000 a year, and the marriage contract of his son and Mlle. Vanlerberghe cost $16,000 as Registrar's tax We may imagine how this shrewd cook (he could neither read nor write) made this fortune, when we read that he had constantly about him able lawyers, experienced managers, and intelligent clerks, who (the latter) received some $8,000 a year, a splendid apartment and "he (M. Paulée) secured for them the favors of some of the young actresses of the Theatre Française," and that several of his more confidential clerks still receive from his heirs large pensions to keep secret what they may know.

Ouvrard was a more celebrated army contractor (to use the modern word). Ouvrard was firmly persuaded that with money every thing was possible. He had profoundly studied and had accurately calculated all its power on the human

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heart. M. Veron says it almost seemed he had studied under the professor of chemistry who said, Gold has the property of gladdening the sight of man; and he gives a late instance of Ouvrard's philosophy: During the war with Spain, in 1823, he reached Tolosa on the eve of the day his service as contractor commenced; the army bivouacked in the suburbs of the town; it had no stores nor provisions. Ouvrard was angrily examined: To-morrow the army will receive its ordinary rations. But the second corps requires ten days' rations. To-morrow the second corps will receive its ten days' rations. He went to all the authorities of the place, to the clergy, to the lawyers, to the shopkeepers: Tell every body you know, said he, that I shall pay in cash every thing I take; what is delivered to me before eight o'clock in the morning, I will pay ten times its value; nine times its value what is delivered before nine o'clock, eight times what is delivered before ten o'clock, and so on diminishing one tenth per hour. The army had an abundance of stores and of provisions during the whole campaign. He frequently used to say: "There are but two ways of carrying on war, by pillaging or by paying; it is cheapest to pay. Between Ouvrard and Seguin (another celebrated contractor, whose house was filled to encumbrance with violins and music, and who constantly kept some thirty or thirty-five horses in his stables which he never rode or drove) there were frequently contested accounts. It appeared from the last account between them that Ouvrard owed Seguin $1,000,000; now Ouvrard had lost all of his fortune except a last million of dollars. He pretended the government owed him a million of dollars, and he referred Seguin to the public treasury. Legal proceedings were instituted against Ouvrard; at their maturity, a writ, like our Ca. Sa., was issued against him, and it was confided to the most skilful constable of Paris. The latter dogged Ouvrard from eight o'clock in the evening, following him to the Rocher de Cancale and to theatres, until he returned home at two o'clock in the morning. Every night Ouvrard returned to the same house, and a posse of constables watched the door until daybreak. One morning they sought the Juge de Paix (whose presence is indispensable whenever a house is to be entered by force) that they might enter the house; they entered without difficulty, they searched all the rooms, all the closets, they made a mason sound all the walls. To have arrested Ouvrard it would have

been necessary to have pulled down the whole house: he had constructed a movable chimney back, which afforded him a secure retreat. Furnished with an almanac indicating the hours of sunset and of sunrise, and an excellent pocket chronometer, Ouvrard never left his retreat except at the indicated hours; but this almanac was inexact, and one evening when he came into the street, he was arrested, it was ten minutes to sunset. While so pursued, Ouvrard always carried about with him fifty thousand francs in bank-notes; he offered them to the constable if he would release him: I cannot take them, sir, replied the constable; besides Seguin has given me sixty thousand francs to arrest you. Ouvrard had not left the gaolregistrar's office, when one of his nephews came to console him. Don't feel grieved, said Ouvrard, don't you see I shall not be afraid now of being arrested. No insolvent debtor had ever been admitted as a prisoner in the Conciergerie (a famous gaol immediately back of the Palais-du-Justice; insolvent debtors are commonly sent to the prison at Clichy); Ouvrard procured the favor of being transferred there. The gaoler was even authorized to rent him a large and well distributed suite of rooms and for six thousand francs a year. This apartment was soon richly decorated. So many visitors came to see him, the imprisoned insolvent debtor was sometimes so tired of receiving company, he would order the gaoler to say: Monsieur Ouvrard has gone out. The Rocher de Cancale furnished Ouvrard's dinner, and the choicest brands of the Clos-Vougeot; celebrated persons, wits, noblemen, distinguished artists, appeared every evening. These epicurean dinners became very celebrated, and Ouvrard told me that one day Seguin himself asked the favor of being invited to them. Seguin received his invitation immediately; the dinner was one of the gayest and most splendid which had been given there. There is but one drawback to the dinner, said Ouvrard, Lucullus is obliged to dine every day at home!

"What!" replied Seguin, "how can you, now fifty-five years old and having before you scarcely five good years, how can you be content to spend them in gaol! Now see here, I am a good fellow and I feel anxious to pay my share of the reckoning; give me three millions, and tonight you sleep in your own bed."

"Monsieur Seguin," said Ouvrard, "you are some years older than I am; if you were offered a speculation which would assure you a clear profit of five millions,

would you refuse it because it would oblige you to make a voyage to Calcutta?" "No, certainly not."

"And yet, you would be obliged to embark on the ocean, to go four thousand leagues, to leave your family, your children, your friends, to abandon an excellent cuisine such as we have before us, and such choice wine as this, and perhaps encounter the yellow fever."

"Yes, yes, yes; but five millions, five millions!"

"Eh bien!" replied Ouvrard, in a victorious tone, "without quitting terra firma, without changing sky or clime, without bidding adieu to my family or friends, without even being deprived, Monsieur Seguin, of the pleasure of receiving and dining gayly with you, out of the reach of all disastrous chances and perils, I earn here, in this delightful retreat, the five millions for which you would expose yourself to such rude sacrifices."

There was a moment's silence. Seguin became serious and pensive, and at last said, coldly: "Eh bien, Monsieur Ouvrard, perhaps you are in the right."

"There is in the life of Ouvrard a page which will redeem many faults, and will appease many enmities. Ouvrard knew Colonel Labédoyère. After the Hundred Days, Labédoyère sought him, to obtain his advice: Leave France, said Ouvrard to him, at once, go to the United States; here's a letter of credit for fifty thousand francs, and fifteen hundred louis d'or. The next day the Prince de Talleyrand sent for Ouvrard, and demanded explanations about the letter of credit found among Labédoyère's papers, for he was arrested: It is not before you. Prince, said he, that I need justify myself, for having endeavored to save a proscribed man whose head is menaced. Prince Talleyrand felt this reply; and Ouvrard was not disturbed."

BOARDING-SCHOOLS, FRENCH AND OTHER.

THE Indians say, "Winter cannot come

till the ponds are full," and an equally infallible preliminary, to us citizens of New-York, is the filling up of our various boarding-schools, French and other, before the holidays.

The process begins carly. With the first falling leaf, the curious in such things may observe, in front of certain tall and elegant houses in conspicuous or retired situations, tracks that show the incessant wheeling of carriages, every one of which has been freighted with its fluttering damsel or two, an anxious papa or mamma, or guardian, and a cloth-enveloped trunk, whose fresh appearance proclaims that the owner has not yet been much of a traveller. And "about these days," as the Almanac says, or indeed a little carlier, the newspapers break out with a new advertisement, simultaneously, as if they had all been inoculated in a batch-"Mrs.

-'s Boarding and Day School for Young Ladies will reopen on the 15th of September." The initiated are in nowise puzzled to account for the accumulated carriage-tracks.

But who can tell what sighs of little beating hearts load those first cool breezes of autumn, or count the hundreds of pairs

of tearful, pretty eyes that gaze wistfully out of those carriage windows upon our streets of palaces, finding all barren because it is not "home?" It is the first lesson, to many of these little thoughtful ones, on the value of home; up to this time, perhaps, considered a stupid old place, where there is no fun going on that is comparable with the doings of the gay, free world beyond its careful walls. Papa, whose occasional snubbings have sometimes been rebutted with gentle pouts, and mamma, not always pleasantly thanked for her maternal reproofs and cautions, are seen transfigured through those tears, till their faces are as the faces of angels, a class of beings, by the by, of whom hardly any body knows so much as school-girls scem to do, perhaps because they are specially favored with a good many, not needless, to keep watch and ward over their young steps. What questioning glances are thrown up at the cold freestone face of the new home, which the perverse little heart has already vowed shall never seem home, whatever kindness or pleasure may be found in it; though indeed prejudice is too apt to decide at once that there can be neither kindness nor pleasure there, thanks to the benevolent pains taken by

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