OUR PARIS LETTER.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 376, 27 February 1880, Page 2

OUR PARIS LETTER.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

Paris, Dec. 22.

The National Opera has revised " Hamlet" to enable M. Maurel to make his debut; he is not exactly a tyro ; he has studied in Italy and England, and so represents Eamlet as both nations view the ( character—by a troubled exprefsion of features, a tragedy look, to strike the eye. | In France, Hamlet is accepted as a dreamer, lost in doubt and metaphysics. M. Maurel depicts him nervous, irritable, less subjected by melancholy than a prey to a crying sufferance not to tear the veil of dissimulation which masks his road to vengeance. M. Maurel's voice is fresh, and best when naturally followed ; he has great command over his soprano voice, and a wonderful art for economising it. He was successful in the first act, rather overtaxed in the second, but was superb in the "Got© a Nunnery, go!" where tho heart of Hamlet seems to tear itself away from that of Ophelia. Messrs Erkmann and Chatrain are still in misery ;»the censors have not yet passed their drama " Alsace," which is too patriotic. A.t the present moment, when it is an indictable offence to compaie Prince Bismarck to a sweep, and when the Chancellor has joined Austria to Germany, and Denmark to Schlesweig, France cannot be too circumspect. The peculiarity about capital crimes in France just now is, that their perpetrators are mostly young men under twenty years of age. Half a dozen of these culprits have been condemned within the last five months to be guillotined. M. Grevy's milk of human kindness prevents too frequently the sentences from being executed. A good business in the way of swindling seems to be done by psrsonating police officers. The Court of Appeal in France is a two-edged sword. The Abbot Berlioz, in his sermon, strayed so far from the text as to abuse the Republic ; he was indicted and fined 50f.; on appeal, the fine I was increased to 20Of.

From Russian journals we now learn that, after the capitulation of Met- —-for which the Czar thanked God, as a " puuishment on Napoleon 111. for his work at Sebastopol," Bismarck aimed to restore the Emperor, and make peace, in which he was thwarted, however, by Gortschakoff. The Russians feel very much the failure of their Merv campaign, and detest the Shah of Persia as much as they do the Germans; as for the Austrians, they have only contempt. The students, unable for the moment to play at Nihilism, are resisting the efforts made to compel them to dress in European fashions like the Japanese ; they insist on wearing the smock, with organ-pipe quilting, and bloomer pantaloons; in jack-boots.

French correspondents, if one reads between the lines, do not speak enthusiastically of the Spanish wedding ; the people have been cracked up to hurrah it, but sober heads say the political marriage will prove to be impolitic. One writer came across Bazaine in a bookshop, a stare he awed the ex-Marshal into insignificance; he looked daggers, but used none. The King intends decorating all the foreign journalists who were present at the cortege ; he confessed to one of them these displays fatigued him, and when the last was over, he and his wife, on arriving at the palace, changed their clothes, and went out secretly to promenade amidst the crowd. The bull fight is admitted to have been very barbarous, and resembled an abattoir, which is considered a proof of success. Another correspondent stumbled upon the remaining effects of the late Queen Mercedes, which were being quietly packed off to the Escurial, or oblivion, which is worse than death. The same writer had the intention to run down to view the disasters of Murcia, but an Englishman assured him, if he desired to go rapidly, he ought to post it—a mode of travelling which beat the railway train by thirty-six hours. ' <

Prince Jerome Napoleon iscoming round —for principles. change with times, as tenets with books. He was present at the funeral of Comte Branicki. and actually knelt down during the elevation of the Host, which he did not do at the funeral of his cousin. This, along with a disapproval of the Government Bill against the Jesuit professors, ought to atone for the Prince's past atheism,; and eating rump steaks and jambonneaujon Good Fridays. The"memoirs of Prince Metternich, now being published, are capital reading before a snug fire and in an easy chair ; taken with those of Mrne. de Remusat's, they confirm the littleness of the Great Napoleon. The latter avowed lie lost 30,000 horses in one night in the -Russian campaign from the cold, and thathis generals were so demoralised that Uhe'y cfied like children. Of the 300,000 men lost in the expedition of 1812, Napoledn confessed only 30,000 were French ; in marrying an Austrian Archduchess " I made a fool of myself," he said.

Berryer, the celebrated royalist orator and lawyer, was very poor ; on one occasion one and a half million francs of bank notes were placed under his papers in the Clamber of Deputies to purchase his silence—here gold—but he refused.

M. Gye was solicited to lend Albani to sing at the ooera in Paris, the manager boasting—"l have tho most beautiful stage in Europe." Gye refused, adding— " You have the cage, but I have the bird." Zola's nasty novel "Nana" is pronounced to be a failure, even by the lovers of Billingsgate and slang. A prospectus of a public school gives the latitude and longitude of the establishment—about as valuable as a railway time bill. . . . '

A prize poem from Belgium, in honor of coal, thus opens :—

" I sing of coal, whose burning breath, Boils on rails the ambulatory pot." A Frenchman quoted a few days ago, as a line |pom an English poet—"There is nothing new under the sun." " Sir Vaterloo," is the way the journals announce the arrival of Sir Sidney Waterlow at Nice.