PARIS IN JUNE, 1871.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2707, 20 October 1871, Page 2

PARIS IN JUNE, 1871.

(From the Correspondent of the Athenceum.)

“ Paris est mort. Vive Paris! ” seems to be the present motto of our wayward Parisians. Such is their wish—such their warcry ; but it is not yet a reality. Paris is not yet alive. A few days ago, it is true, they looked

more sorrowful, haggard, and desperate than now. Their wan, doleful faces formed a strange contrast with the wonderful good humor, I may say the gaiety, with which they bore, during the first siege, the sawdust bread of M. Such-n-ono, the blundering mismanagement of three Lycurguscs, and the display of mad Masaniellos’ Hessian hoots on the Council-table of the Hotel de Ville. How elated, how spirited, how joyous they were in May ! —how dejected, prostrated, annihilated they appeared a week later ! Had the cold and damp weather anything to do with the change ? I cannot say Is now the June splendor of the pre it father of light the real cause of their halfrenascent elasticity and activity ? Certain it is that the modern Athenians- Atlumens de la blouse, so spoke Villeniain—having ploughed their fickle way through the Byzantine holidays of the Empire, then through the infernal circles of two stages, and the more than Dantesque horrors of the late conflagration, are beginning to forget or forgive by degrees their tremendous suffering and the doings of the most formidable insurrection the world ever witnessed. Ihny look stunned, not sad. The city has even recovered something of its wonted animation. Bourgeouis and bourgeoises are lounging through the ruins, while escouades of Communistic prisoners are led along by two lines of gendarmes, lignavds, or ‘ ‘ dragons. If any feeling for or against the victims or their captors be alive in the breasts of the bystanders, no symptom of any kind betrays the internal thought or emotion. A population of sages and philosophers, looking indifferently on the turmoil of civil war, seems to have emerged from the burning cinders and shrivelled colonnades. Such was the moral state of old Italy And older Greece after the many pMpotlcs of their revolutions invasions, and social changes- It begets ami fosters a kind of national temper, capable of genius, wit, artistic skill, anti mdustrymiite alien to patriotic devotion and selfgovernment. Alas, poor dear France ! Let God protect her ! May she recover at once domestic peace and the love of useful exertion ! , There is some stirring m the streets, and some feeble strivings after pleasure.—in the day-time, at least, for at night the streets are deserted. No wonder. The pro vision of gas is limited, the police are on the alert, arrests are numerous, private revenge is burning slow and deep, revolvers and /usds-d-vent arc not all given up ; and the authorities that be have too good reasons not to encourage the sale of-petroleum. Visitors from all countries already crowd our hotels, lounge over the boulevards, bask under the fine sun, | and seek in vain for a cab or a coach, the automedom of those vehicles being rare, and their exactions so tremendous that ten francs per hour are sometimes asked for and given freely. Gr eks and Armenians, men from the banks of the Danube and the Nile, come in shoals to contemplate ruins, of which no description can give an adequate ruins ! What a picturesque desolation ! Though M. Alphand seems disposed to deserve the title of Haiustnanu the Second, though he displays the greatest activity in dressing the wounds inflicted on our w retched city during the “Infernal week,” whole f/uartiers are heaps of rubbish ; chimneys hanging over the void space, upholstery still burning and emitting smoke from the caves and deep cellars; arches half beaten down, and still bespattered with gore. Piranesi would find here the choicest bits of monumental havoc and pictorial chaos. As the walls of the Tuilleries, Hotel de la Ville, &c , are standing, and the debris have fallen inside, one scarcely realises the amount of harm done. The half dismantled skeletons of the porticoes shows themselves erect and grizzly on a blue background, the smiling radiancy of which renders the sight more fantastically intolerable and tragically heinous. At the Point du Jour, at Neuilly, at the Croix-Rouge. cam! Rue du Bac, more especially near the fortifications, the scene is an indescribable and incredilde picture of desolation. It is difficult to give the name of a street in which several houses have not been riddled with shot; and many private dwellings which appear intact ha e received one or two of the shells which the impartial Communeux sent flying about at haphazard : the baulk ue Meudon, Sevres, Asnieres are but a museum of ruined villas. My own suburb m little retreat had for its share six bombs, one of which took away the whole eastern corner of the house ; the roof of the stables was sliced off, as with a gigantic razor. To-day the rural viguewus begin again their pruning and tilling, and resume quietly their old ways ; rancour does not livelong, nor deep thoughts or feelings abide long iu those naive minds and light hearts. Commnmux bore a particular hatred to the baulieue, whose inhabitants bad not accepted the solidarity and companionship of those people, and they threw unmercifully loads of abuses and shells of . every kind and shape of the kiosques, chalets, villas, ajad little bijoux of French suburban cockneydom. Some very pretty mansions are now no more. There is, consequently, a great hubbub of glazh rs, carpenters, ebonuta. iron and tile workers of all descriptions. They are valiantly at work, repairing partial damages and putting plasters on small wounds. As to building anew the whole demolished bouses, it is another matter. Money is scarce: as no one devotes a thought to the tinano al difficulties of the country, it may remain scarce for a length of time. All seemed convinced that France is rich enough to pay the cost of its defeat: and truly, with some far-sightedness, wisdom. charity, and mutual forbearance, the risorgimento would be, if not easy and prompt, at least certain and within the means of our great, powerful, giddy, and unlucky country. Out of 60,000 houses, not more than one hundred have been completely destroyed : and the resources of the country are still immense.