The Innocents Abroad

Chapter 13

The next morning we were up and dressed at ten o'clock. We went to the

'commissionaire' of the hotel--I don't know what a 'commissionaire' is,

but that is the man we went to--and told him we wanted a guide. He said

the national Exposition had drawn such multitudes of Englishmen and

Americans to Paris that it would be next to impossible to find a good

guide unemployed. He said he usually kept a dozen or two on hand, but he

only had three now. He called them. One looked so like a very pirate

that we let him go at once. The next one spoke with a simpering

precision of pronunciation that was irritating and said:

"If ze zhentlemans will to me make ze grande honneur to me rattain in

hees serveece, I shall show to him every sing zat is magnifique to look

upon in ze beautiful Parree. I speaky ze Angleesh pairfaitemaw."

He would have done well to have stopped there, because he had that much

by heart and said it right off without making a mistake. But his

self-complacency seduced him into attempting a flight into regions of

unexplored English, and the reckless experiment was his ruin. Within ten

seconds he was so tangled up in a maze of mutilated verbs and torn and

bleeding forms of speech that no human ingenuity could ever have gotten

him out of it with credit. It was plain enough that he could not

"speaky" the English quite as "pairfaitemaw" as he had pretended he

could.

The third man captured us. He was plainly dressed, but he had a

noticeable air of neatness about him. He wore a high silk hat which was

a little old, but had been carefully brushed. He wore second-hand kid

gloves, in good repair, and carried a small rattan cane with a curved

handle--a female leg--of ivory. He stepped as gently and as daintily as

a cat crossing a muddy street; and oh, he was urbanity; he was quiet,

unobtrusive self-possession; he was deference itself! He spoke softly

and guardedly; and when he was about to make a statement on his sole

responsibility or offer a suggestion, he weighed it by drachms and

scruples first, with the crook of his little stick placed meditatively to

his teeth. His opening speech was perfect. It was perfect in

construction, in phraseology, in grammar, in emphasis, in pronunciation

--everything. He spoke little and guardedly after that. We were charmed.

We were more than charmed--we were overjoyed. We hired him at once. We

never even asked him his price. This man--our lackey, our servant, our

unquestioning slave though he was--was still a gentleman--we could see

that--while of the other two one was coarse and awkward and the other was

a born pirate. We asked our man Friday's name. He drew from his

pocketbook a snowy little card and passed it to us with a profound bow:

A. BILLFINGER,

Guide to Paris, France, Germany,

Spain, &c., &c.

Grande Hotel du Louvre.

"Billfinger! Oh, carry me home to die!"

That was an "aside" from Dan. The atrocious name grated harshly on my

ear, too. The most of us can learn to forgive, and even to like, a

countenance that strikes us unpleasantly at first, but few of us, I

fancy, become reconciled to a jarring name so easily. I was almost sorry

we had hired this man, his name was so unbearable. However, no matter.

We were impatient to start. Billfinger stepped to the door to call a

carriage, and then the doctor said:

"Well, the guide goes with the barbershop, with the billiard-table, with

the gasless room, and may be with many another pretty romance of Paris.

I expected to have a guide named Henri de Montmorency, or Armand de la

Chartreuse, or something that would sound grand in letters to the

villagers at home, but to think of a Frenchman by the name of Billfinger!

Oh! This is absurd, you know. This will never do. We can't say

Billfinger; it is nauseating. Name him over again; what had we better

call him? Alexis du Caulaincourt?"

"Alphonse Henri Gustave de Hauteville," I suggested.

"Call him Ferguson," said Dan.

That was practical, unromantic good sense. Without debate, we expunged

Billfinger as Billfinger, and called him Ferguson.

The carriage--an open barouche--was ready. Ferguson mounted beside the

driver, and we whirled away to breakfast. As was proper, Mr. Ferguson

stood by to transmit our orders and answer questions. By and by, he

mentioned casually--the artful adventurer--that he would go and get his

breakfast as soon as we had finished ours. He knew we could not get

along without him and that we would not want to loiter about and wait for

him. We asked him to sit down and eat with us. He begged, with many a

bow, to be excused. It was not proper, he said; he would sit at another

table. We ordered him peremptorily to sit down with us.

Here endeth the first lesson. It was a mistake.

As long as we had that fellow after that, he was always hungry; he was

always thirsty. He came early; he stayed late; he could not pass a

restaurant; he looked with a lecherous eye upon every wine shop.

Suggestions to stop, excuses to eat and to drink, were forever on his

lips. We tried all we could to fill him so full that he would have no

room to spare for a fortnight, but it was a failure. He did not hold

enough to smother the cravings of his superhuman appetite.

He had another "discrepancy" about him. He was always wanting us to buy

things. On the shallowest pretenses he would inveigle us into shirt

stores, boot stores, tailor shops, glove shops--anywhere under the broad

sweep of the heavens that there seemed a chance of our buying anything.

Anyone could have guessed that the shopkeepers paid him a percentage on

the sales, but in our blessed innocence we didn't until this feature of

his conduct grew unbearably prominent. One day Dan happened to mention

that he thought of buying three or four silk dress patterns for presents.

Ferguson's hungry eye was upon him in an instant. In the course of

twenty minutes the carriage stopped.

"What's this?"

"Zis is ze finest silk magazin in Paris--ze most celebrate."

"What did you come here for? We told you to take us to the palace of the

Louvre."

"I suppose ze gentleman say he wish to buy some silk."

"You are not required to 'suppose' things for the party, Ferguson. We do

not wish to tax your energies too much. We will bear some of the burden

and heat of the day ourselves. We will endeavor to do such 'supposing'

as is really necessary to be done. Drive on." So spake the doctor.

Within fifteen minutes the carriage halted again, and before another silk

store. The doctor said:

"Ah, the palace of the Louvre--beautiful, beautiful edifice! Does the

Emperor Napoleon live here now, Ferguson?"

"Ah, Doctor! You do jest; zis is not ze palace; we come there directly.

But since we pass right by zis store, where is such beautiful silk--"

"Ah! I see, I see. I meant to have told you that we did not wish to

purchase any silks to-day, but in my absent-mindedness I forgot it. I

also meant to tell you we wished to go directly to the Louvre, but I

forgot that also. However, we will go there now. Pardon my seeming

carelessness, Ferguson. Drive on."

Within the half hour we stopped again--in front of another silk store.

We were angry; but the doctor was always serene, always smooth-voiced.

He said:

"At last! How imposing the Louvre is, and yet how small! How

exquisitely fashioned! How charmingly situated!--Venerable, venerable

pile--"

"Pairdon, Doctor, zis is not ze Louvre--it is--"

"What is it?"

"I have ze idea--it come to me in a moment--zat ze silk in zis magazin--"

"Ferguson, how heedless I am. I fully intended to tell you that we did

not wish to buy any silks to-day, and I also intended to tell you that we

yearned to go immediately to the palace of the Louvre, but enjoying the

happiness of seeing you devour four breakfasts this morning has so filled

me with pleasurable emotions that I neglect the commonest interests of

the time. However, we will proceed now to the Louvre, Ferguson."

"But, doctor," (excitedly,) "it will take not a minute--not but one small

minute! Ze gentleman need not to buy if he not wish to--but only look at

ze silk--look at ze beautiful fabric. [Then pleadingly.] Sair--just only

one leetle moment!"

Dan said, "Confound the i***t! I don't want to see any silks today, and

I won't look at them. Drive on."

And the doctor: "We need no silks now, Ferguson. Our hearts yearn for

the Louvre. Let us journey on--let us journey on."

"But doctor! It is only one moment--one leetle moment. And ze time will

be save--entirely save! Because zere is nothing to see now--it is too

late. It want ten minute to four and ze Louvre close at four--only one

leetle moment, Doctor!"

The treacherous miscreant! After four breakfasts and a gallon of

champagne, to serve us such a scurvy trick. We got no sight of the

countless treasures of art in the Louvre galleries that day, and our only

poor little satisfaction was in the reflection that Ferguson sold not a

solitary silk dress pattern.

I am writing this chapter partly for the satisfaction of abusing that

accomplished knave Billfinger, and partly to show whosoever shall read

this how Americans fare at the hands of the Paris guides and what sort of

people Paris guides are. It need not be supposed that we were a stupider

or an easier prey than our countrymen generally are, for we were not.

The guides deceive and defraud every American who goes to Paris for the

first time and sees its sights alone or in company with others as little

experienced as himself. I shall visit Paris again someday, and then let

the guides beware! I shall go in my war paint--I shall carry my tomahawk

along.

I think we have lost but little time in Paris. We have gone to bed every

night tired out. Of course we visited the renowned International

Exposition. All the world did that. We went there on our third day in

Paris--and we stayed there nearly two hours. That was our first and last

visit. To tell the truth, we saw at a glance that one would have to

spend weeks--yea, even months--in that monstrous establishment to get an

intelligible idea of it. It was a wonderful show, but the moving masses

of people of all nations we saw there were a still more wonderful show.

I discovered that if I were to stay there a month, I should still find

myself looking at the people instead of the inanimate objects on

exhibition. I got a little interested in some curious old tapestries of

the thirteenth century, but a party of Arabs came by, and their dusky

faces and quaint costumes called my attention away at once. I watched a

silver swan, which had a living grace about his movements and a living

intelligence in his eyes--watched him swimming about as comfortably and

as unconcernedly as if he had been born in a morass instead of a

jeweler's shop--watched him seize a silver fish from under the water and

hold up his head and go through all the customary and elaborate motions

of swallowing it--but the moment it disappeared down his throat some

tattooed South Sea Islanders approached and I yielded to their

attractions.

Presently I found a revolving pistol several hundred years old which

looked strangely like a modern Colt, but just then I heard that the

Empress of the French was in another part of the building, and hastened

away to see what she might look like. We heard martial music--we saw an

unusual number of soldiers walking hurriedly about--there was a general

movement among the people. We inquired what it was all about and learned

that the Emperor of the French and the Sultan of Turkey were about to

review twenty-five thousand troops at the Arc de l'Etoile. We

immediately departed. I had a greater anxiety to see these men than I

could have had to see twenty expositions.

We drove away and took up a position in an open space opposite the

American minister's house. A speculator bridged a couple of barrels with

a board and we hired standing places on it. Presently there was a sound

of distant music; in another minute a pillar of dust came moving slowly

toward us; a moment more and then, with colors flying and a grand crash

of military music, a gallant array of cavalrymen emerged from the dust

and came down the street on a gentle trot. After them came a long line

of artillery; then more cavalry, in splendid uniforms; and then their

imperial majesties Napoleon III and Abdul Aziz. The vast concourse of

people swung their hats and shouted--the windows and housetops in the

wide vicinity burst into a snowstorm of waving handkerchiefs, and the

wavers of the same mingled their cheers with those of the masses below.

It was a stirring spectacle.

But the two central figures claimed all my attention. Was ever such a

contrast set up before a multitude till then? Napoleon in military

uniform--a long-bodied, short-legged man, fiercely moustached, old,

wrinkled, with eyes half closed, and such a deep, crafty, scheming

expression about them!--Napoleon, bowing ever so gently to the loud

plaudits, and watching everything and everybody with his cat eyes from

under his depressed hat brim, as if to discover any sign that those

cheers were not heartfelt and cordial.

Abdul Aziz, absolute lord of the Ottoman empire--clad in dark green

European clothes, almost without ornament or insignia of rank; a red

Turkish fez on his head; a short, stout, dark man, black-bearded,

black-eyed, stupid, unprepossessing--a man whose whole appearance

somehow suggested that if he only had a cleaver in his hand and a white

apron on, one would not be at all surprised to hear him say: "A mutton

roast today, or will you have a nice porterhouse steak?"

Napoleon III, the representative of the highest modern civilization,

progress, and refinement; Abdul-Aziz, the representative of a people by

nature and training filthy, brutish, ignorant, unprogressive,

superstitious--and a government whose Three Graces are Tyranny, Rapacity,

Blood. Here in brilliant Paris, under this majestic Arch of Triumph, the

First Century greets the Nineteenth!

NAPOLEON III., Emperor of France! Surrounded by shouting thousands, by

military pomp, by the splendors of his capital city, and companioned by

kings and princes--this is the man who was sneered at and reviled and

called Bastard--yet who was dreaming of a crown and an empire all the

while; who was driven into exile--but carried his dreams with him; who

associated with the common herd in America and ran foot races for a

wager--but still sat upon a throne in fancy; who braved every danger to

go to his dying mother--and grieved that she could not be spared to see

him cast aside his plebeian vestments for the purple of royalty; who kept

his faithful watch and walked his weary beat a common policeman of

London--but dreamed the while of a coming night when he should tread the

long-drawn corridors of the Tuileries; who made the miserable fiasco of

Strasbourg; saw his poor, shabby eagle, forgetful of its lesson, refuse

to perch upon his shoulder; delivered his carefully prepared, sententious

burst of eloquence upon unsympathetic ears; found himself a prisoner, the

butt of small wits, a mark for the pitiless ridicule of all the world

--yet went on dreaming of coronations and splendid pageants as before; who

lay a forgotten captive in the dungeons of Ham--and still schemed and

planned and pondered over future glory and future power; President of

France at last! a coup d'etat, and surrounded by applauding armies,

welcomed by the thunders of cannon, he mounts a throne and waves before

an astounded world the sceptre of a mighty empire! Who talks of the

marvels of fiction? Who speaks of the wonders of romance? Who prates of

the tame achievements of Aladdin and the Magii of Arabia?

ABDUL-AZIZ, Sultan of Turkey, Lord of the Ottoman Empire! Born to a

throne; weak, stupid, ignorant, almost, as his meanest slave; chief of a

vast royalty, yet the puppet of his Premier and the obedient child of a

tyrannical mother; a man who sits upon a throne--the beck of whose finger

moves navies and armies--who holds in his hands the power of life and

death over millions--yet who sleeps, sleeps, eats, eats, idles with his

eight hundred concubines, and when he is surfeited with eating and

sleeping and idling, and would rouse up and take the reins of government

and threaten to be a sultan, is charmed from his purpose by wary Fuad

Pacha with a pretty plan for a new palace or a new ship--charmed away

with a new toy, like any other restless child; a man who sees his people

robbed and oppressed by soulless tax-gatherers, but speaks no word to

save them; who believes in gnomes and genii and the wild fables of The

Arabian Nights, but has small regard for the mighty magicians of to-day,

and is nervous in the presence of their mysterious railroads and

steamboats and telegraphs; who would see undone in Egypt all that great

Mehemet Ali achieved, and would prefer rather to forget than emulate him;

a man who found his great empire a blot upon the earth--a degraded,

poverty-stricken, miserable, infamous agglomeration of ignorance, crime,

and brutality--and will idle away the allotted days of his trivial life

and then pass to the dust and the worms and leave it so!

Napoleon has augmented the commercial prosperity of France in ten years

to such a degree that figures can hardly compute it. He has rebuilt

Paris and has partly rebuilt every city in the state. He condemns a

whole street at a time, assesses the damages, pays them, and rebuilds

superbly. Then speculators buy up the ground and sell, but the original

owner is given the first choice by the government at a stated price

before the speculator is permitted to purchase. But above all things, he

has taken the sole control of the empire of France into his hands and

made it a tolerably free land--for people who will not attempt to go too

far in meddling with government affairs. No country offers greater

security to life and property than France, and one has all the freedom he

wants, but no license--no license to interfere with anybody or make

anyone uncomfortable.

As for the Sultan, one could set a trap any where and catch a dozen abler

men in a night.

The bands struck up, and the brilliant adventurer, Napoleon III., the

genius of Energy, Persistence, Enterprise; and the feeble Abdul-Aziz, the

genius of Ignorance, Bigotry, and Indolence, prepared for the Forward

--March!

We saw the splendid review, we saw the white-moustached old Crimean

soldier, Canrobert, Marshal of France, we saw--well, we saw every thing,

and then we went home satisfied.