My Paris Diary of 1870 383 



"Paris, 27th May, 1870. — I have taken the first floor of No. 204, Rue 

 de Rivoli, at 8,000 francs rent. My proprietor is M. Desfontaines, one of 

 Louis Philippe's councillors. He is an old man who lives at Noissy, and 

 his house is managed by his concierge, whom we call the faux bon homme. 

 He sits with his wife all day under the arcade, and the people of the 

 quarter dislike him because he has made 100,000 francs. Every Monday 

 morning he brings us from the country a country bunch of flowers. 



" To-day I went with my cousin Francis Currie to the other side of the 

 Seine for furniture. We went to one Recapet's, a bric-a-brac dealer, and 

 having to ask the way I inquired of a shopwoman in the faubourg, a 

 dealer in religious prints, the road to the ' Passage Marie.' ' The Passage 

 S te Marie,' she answered, correcting me. There is still religion in France ! 

 Yesterday Francis Currie saw a dead man fished out of the river near the 

 Pont Royal. A woman in the crowd asked what it was all about. ' A 

 naked man,' my cousin answered. 'If it is only that!' said the woman. 

 I afterwards drove with my wife to the Jardin des Plantes, and back 

 through the Faubourg St. Antoine. Coming home we saw the carriages 

 of ' Le Singe ' as they call their Sovereign. 



" 30^ May. — We drove down on Saturday to Chantilly by the old 

 Royal Road passing through St. Denis and Luzarches. There are some 

 fine views on the way, but the road is still paved nearly the whole distance. 

 In the Forest we noticed two large oaks on the boundary between Oise 

 and Seine. These are the only trees more than twenty [sic] years old. 

 The races on Sunday were pleasant and the weather fine. A horse called 

 Bigarreau won the principal stakes. 



" 2nd June. — To Fontainebleau to play tennis. Our party was Frank 

 Lascelles and his wife, Henry Wodehouse and Mr. and Mrs. Fred Ricardo. 

 Lascelles and I played from two till half-past six. The paumier, Garcin, 

 is eighty-three years old. In his time he has played tennis with Welling- 

 ton and others of the Waterloo heroes. ' Napoleon Bonaparte,' he told us, 

 1 played in the tennis court at Fontainebleau, but did not show much apti- 

 tude. II n'avait pas meme des dispositions. Quant a Wellington, il ne 

 faisait que s'y amuser, il venait de gagner la bataille de Waterloo.' (The 

 old man hobbled into the court to play us a chouettc, supported by a 

 granddaughter, who picked up and handed him the balls. He pretended 

 at first not to be able to send the ball over the net, but with five francs 

 on the set he soon recovered his skill and won his money. Anne made 

 an excellent drawing of the court while we were playing.) 



" 3rd June. — Two great fires have taken place, the one at Fontaine- 

 bleau, which destroyed a large part of the Forest, the other at Constanti- 

 nople, a thousand houses burnt at Pera, including the English Embassy. 



" People in Paris seem to be becoming aware how grossly they have 

 been cajoled in the matter of Liberal reform. I myself thought three 

 months ago that it was sincere, and I was only surprised that so long- 

 sighted a policy should have been adopted by the Bonapartes, who have 

 always held by small expedients. For the future of the dynasty there 

 could have been no greater folly than a sham conversion to constitutional- 

 ism and a repetition of the old trick of the plebiscite. Another such vie- 



