COURT GAIETIES IN FRANCE

Southland Times, Volume 2, Issue 2, 14 July 1863, Page 5 (Supplement)

COURT GAIETIES IN FRANCE

The great Emperor Charles V. used to say, " The French look foolish, and are wise ; the Spaniards are foolish, and look wise ; the Portuguese look foolish, and so they are/ Whether i tKe distinction was apposite Or not I j must refrain from deciding; but this j much I will say, that if we were to j judge of the French nation by the j French court, the French might be said to be what Charles V. thought . they looked. It really borders on the •incredible how much the court fesfcivi- " ties have been talked of in Paris last week. In the semi-fashionable and semi-official salons the buzz of conversation was, and still is, almost exclusively of fancy balls, and suppers, and j masquerades, and fantastic dresses. Were Dangeau to revive, how many ; fine things he would have to chronicle , about the stupendous fancy or masked j balls given by snecession, first by M. Brouin de Lhuys, then by the Emperor, then by the Princess de Metternich, and finally by Madame Walewski. Nothing comes amiss to a hungry stomach} nnd it being one of the maladies of mankind to be greedy in the extreme of anything that refers to the gests and deeds of mortal divinities, a table to starve at must not be placed before the famishing public. Let us, therefore, put at once on record that the masked ball given of late at the Tuilleries vms splendid. In fact, | the Emperor and Imperial Prince wearing the A^enetian mnntle, there is enough already to awaken the imagination of the reader ; but picture to yourself the Empress of the French attired as a Doge's wife was when there was such a thing as a Doge! < Poor Venice, whose sole comfort for ", not forming part of that Italy which was to be free from the Alps to the Adriatic, is th.'it her history lias supplied the Empress with a fancy costume ! Not less appropriate was the selection made by Princess Mathilde, who, being bitterly opposed to the Pope, wore, nevertheless, the costume of the celebrated Mathilde of the middle ages, who was, at that tjme, the benefactress of the Sovereign Pontiff! Why Alphonse de Rothschild was disguised in the character of a bird of Paradise, and Solomon d*> Rothschild in the character of a blue bird, is a mystery as yet unravelled. After supper, countess de Castiglione was seen crossing the rooms with a negro — the Duke de Choiseul — who carried the train of her gown, and held in his hand a parasol t f pink satin embroidered with silver. This, perhaps, gave rise to the supposition that the handsome countess personified M. Flaubert's heroine, the Carthaginian Sulammbo ; but history should not be falsified in such important matters. The truth is, that Madame de Castiglione wore the costume of a Roman matron — the long purple robe, the black tunic fastened on the shoulder, and leaving the arm quite bare, the diadem shining on a profusion of hair, and the sandals covering a part, only a part of the foot — from which I would be tempted to infer that, in the adoption of such a toilet, she had no other political aim than to exhibit as much as possible of her beauty to the admir- , ing gaze of those present. The attention of all thinking men has been duly, yet inadequately, invited to the remarkable circumstances that from four beehives covered with foilage and drawn by shepherds to the centre of the Snlle j des Masechaux, young winged girls, j emerged, at a signal, given by Strauss, j and, with the humming of bees, per- i formed a ballet, the orchestra playing! the waltz of. the butterflies; but that \ this ballet had been composed by Mel'ante (of the opera) and rehearsed the day before at the Tuilleries, is another striking circumstance with which posterity has a right to be made acquainted. The banqueting-room had been, of course, decorated with a studied display of splendor. Centre-pieces of finely wrought gold and silver glittered through a mass of flowers and palmtrees. An artist has been ordered to draw this dec ration as well as the beehives, bo that coming generations may be favored with the undying image of the wonders worked by the Empire. They are costly, no doubt ; but what of that ! The civil list of the Emperor is more than double the list of Louis Philippe. France pays the bill. Napoleon is reported to have enjoyed him- ' self very much. Le roi sanitise. Why not? Count Bacchiochi, I trust, will not give me the lie, if I say that Napoleou is, after all, a man of pleasure. No beardless hahilue dv Bal Mobile is more fond of dancing ; no youth of 20 can boast of danciu -, the Landers with more heartiness than the stern statesman who is on the wrong side of fifty. When people suppose him to be buried in deep meditation and busy remodelling the world, he thinks, perhaps, of a pretty actress, Miss So-and-So, and inwardly digests the drolleries of some vaudeville like Turlututu. It is but fair to own that be knows how to act the gal lant to a lady ; and I am sure that, on the occasion of the recent marriage of Earl Cowley's daughter to L#rd Royston, at the British Embassy, there was no fault to find with his courtesy. In this review of the official diversions of the carnival, the ball given by Princess de Metternich is entitled to a full share of admiration. The ball-roomn had been constructed for the There was on each panel a magnificent looking-glass richly ornamented with rare flowers, in which was reflected all the moving happiness of the hour. At the further end a sort of bueu retiro had been erected in the shape of a canopy consisting of a golden trelliagei There the Emperor and the Empress: were received. Of those belongiag^to the sterner sex, all of them more dir less connected with the 2nd of December, suffice it to say that the most

noticeable was a certain marquis who stalked about in the character of a vampire, with a bat on his head. The ladies claim to be mentioned less cursorily. The Empress represented June, and her gown was consequently spotted all over with the eyes of Argus, 'Which suggested to a saucy jester of the "Fauborg St. Germain," the idea that this was meant to express the importance so nnmistakeably imparted to police spies by the Imperial system. Princess de Metternich was a violet, strictly copied from Granville's drawing. Princess Murat was a snow storm. Madame deKersakoffwas a river, the bed of which was worked in her dress, with a due amount of rushes, shells, and fishes. Madame Walewski was a pack of cards, ia which the same saucy jester sees a delicate allusiou to the following ugly adventure; — It occurred at Mdlle. Barbccis, an Italian heroine, A luck more constant than usually falls to the lot of a gambler, a card picked out which was not. like thoss used in the house, and many other untoward circumstances, having drawn the attention of M. de Grammant Caderousse — the same whom a recent duel make so sadly conspicuous — to the practices of a Spainai'd, whose name (Garcia) is no longer a secret, an explanation ensued, which right or wrong, led the persons present to regard as a cheat not only the man called atou^e to account, but also another well known in the musical world. Accordingly they were both stripped of' their clothes, and boots were searched Bank notes having been found under the lining of their coits, nay, under their garters, and put in a safe place, one of the accused is reported to have said boldly, "Gentlemen, supposing we robbed you, you have just robbed us. So, we go quits.*' The mistress of the house, in order to avoid -un eclat, volusteered to indemnify the losers, and threw on the gaming table a necklace of the value of 80,000 f. But nothi ig would do. *' Gentlemen,' 1 said one of the bystanders, " people arj in quest of a king for the Grccs ; here we have two.'' By the bye, what can possibly be the reason why the fashion Has prevailed in France of styling a cheat un Grec ; We are told that, towards the close of the reign of Louis XIV., a knight of Greek origin, uamed Apoulos, who went to Court, was caught in the very act of cheating at play and condemned to the galleys. Hence the appellation of Grec most unjustly pinned on any gamester bent on reversing, , come what may the adverse decrees of fate. But to return, on the very even- j ing of the day on which the adventure j took place, M. de Grammont Cade- j rousse, being at M. de Persigny's, happened to tell all about it, in presence of a grim personage who remarked, as ] soon as the narration was over, that the | narrator ought, to have at once reported I the whole to the police. " Pas si bete!' exclaimed M. de Grammont Caderousse, who did not know his interlocutor, "the police would have Seized our stakes." The grim personage was M. j Boitelle, the prefect of the police him- j self. In justice to M. Colzado, the ] manager of the Italian opera, it must be stated that, in a public letter of his, j the reports circulated about him on this ! occasion are denounced most emphati- \ cally as calumnies. A judicial inquiry ! having been instituted, he is eager for the result, which, he declares, will clear him completely. A strong protest has also been wised by the other party con- ■ cerned. The sifting of the matter will • soon show what the rumors now afloat are worth. — Spectator j