Nine Short Essays | Page 8

nothing of that sort appeared to add
to the wonders of the night; yet, as I turned a moment from the dancers,
I thought I saw something move in the shrubbery. The Laocoon? It
could not be. The arms moving? Yes. As I drew nearer the arms
distinctly moved, putting away at length the coiling serpent, and
pushing from the pedestal the old-men boys, his comrades in agony.
Laocoon shut his mouth, which had been stretched open for about
eighteen centuries, untwisted the last coil of the snake, and stepped
down, a free man. After this it did not surprise me to see Spartacus also
step down and approach him, and the two ancients square off for
fisticuffs, as if they had done it often before, enjoying at night the
release from the everlasting pillory of art. It was the hour of releases,
and I found myself in a moment in the midst of a "classic revival,"
whimsical beyond description. Aeneas hastened to deposit his aged
father in a heap on the gravel and ran after the Sylvan Nymphs;
Theseus gave the Minotaur a respite; Themistocles was bending over
the dying Spartan, who was coming to life; Venus Pudica was waltzing
about the diagonal basin with Antinous; Ascanius was playing marbles
with the infant Hercules. In this unreal phantasmagoria it was a relief to
me to see walking in the area of the private garden two men: the one a
stately person with a kingly air, a handsome face, his head covered with
a huge wig that fell upon his shoulders; the other a farmer-like man,
stout and ungracious, the counterpart of the pictures of the intendant
Colbert. He was pointing up to the palace, and seemed to be speaking
of some alterations, to which talk the other listened impatiently. I
wondered what Napoleon, who by this time was probably dreaming of
Mexico, would have said if he had looked out and seen, not one man in

the garden, but dozens of men, and all the stir that I saw; if he had
known, indeed, that the Great Monarch was walking under his
windows.
I said it was a relief to me to see two real men, but I had no reason to
complain of solitude thereafter till daybreak. That any one saw or
noticed me I doubt, and I soon became so reassured that I had more
delight than fear in watching the coming and going of personages I had
supposed dead a hundred years and more; the appearance at windows
of faces lovely, faces sad, faces terror-stricken; the opening of
casements and the dropping of billets into the garden; the flutter of
disappearing robes; the faint sounds of revels from the interior of the
palace; the hurrying of feet, the flashing of lights, the clink of steel, that
told of partings and sudden armings, and the presence of a king that
will be denied at no doors. I saw through the windows of the long
Galerie de Diane the roues of the Regency at supper, and at table with
them a dark, semi-barbarian little man in a coat of Russian sable, the
coolest head in Europe at a drinking-bout. I saw enter the south
pavilion a tall lady in black, with the air of a royal procuress; and
presently crossed the garden and disappeared in the pavilion a young
Parisian girl, and then another and another, a flock of innocents, and I
thought instantly of the dreadful Parc aux Cerfs at Versailles.
So wrought upon was I by the sight of this infamy that I scarcely
noticed the incoming of a royal train at the southern end of the palace,
and notably in it a lady with light hair and noble mien, and the look in
her face of a hunted lioness at bay. I say scarcely, for hardly had the
royal cortege passed within, when there arose a great clamor in the
inner court, like the roar of an angry multitude, a scuffling of many feet,
firing of guns, thrusting of pikes, followed by yells of defiance in
mingled French and German, the pitching of Swiss Guards from
doorways and windows, and the flashing of flambeaux that ran hither
and thither. "Oh!" I said, "Paris has come to call upon its sovereign; the
pikemen of Paris, led by the bold Barbaroux."
The tumult subsided as suddenly as it had risen, hushed, I imagined, by
the jarring of cannon from the direction of St. Roch; and in the quiet I
saw a little soldier alight at the Rue de Rivoli gate--a little man whom
you might mistake for a corporal of the guard--with a wild, coarse-
featured Corsican (say, rather, Basque) face, his disordered chestnut

hair darkened to black locks by the use of pomatum--a face selfish and
false, but