March 21. In the morning I visited the town, which contains upwards of forty thousand inhabitants; it was the capital of the ancient Orleanois, and is at present of the department of Loiret. Its situation on the Loire, and nearly in the centre of ancient France, as well as the fertility of the surrounding country, renders it one of the most flourishing inland towns of France. It was formerly a considerable depot of colonial produce, which it received by the Loire from Nantes; and in despite of the present general stagnation of commerce, still retains a considerable share of business, its chief manufactures for export being brandy, vinegar, leather, wax candles, earthenware, and woollen bonnets, with which latter it supplies all the adjacent departments.*

* The forest of Orleans is fifty miles in length, and sixteen in breadth.

The sieges which Orleans sustained by Attala in 450, and by the English in 1418, render it celebrated in history. A new statue of its heroine, Joan of Arc, has been erected in the principal place; the old one of this extraordinary amazon having shared the general fate of great characters during the revolution, though it might be supposed that the memory of her services would have saved her head from the general proscription.

I paid Mrs. Thompson a visit in the afternoon, and was amused by some curious anecdotes of our countrymen, whom she had occasion to see passing through Orleans. She had at this time an English sailor in the house, whom she desired might be called in; but Jack was searched for in vain, until the cook demanded if the well had been looked into, for that its bottom was his usual place of retreat? We therefore accompanied her to it, and on her calling, “allons, Jack!” she was immediately answered with a “holla, here am I!” –– “Come along, Jack,” said I in a slang sailor’s voice, and up came a fine manly looking tar, hand over head, by the iron chain from a depth of sixty feet. Seizing me by the hand, and shaking it with Herculean power, “why, then, d––n me,” cried he, “but I am glad to see a real countryman, for as for these here French people they talk so fast, and plague me so, that I can find no place of rest but the bottom of the well, and there I am sure none of them will dare venture to follow me.” He then related his story, as how he had been wounded and taken in a gun boat; and as how, in passing through Orleans in a most miserable plight, Mrs. Thompson had kindly taken him into the house; “but,” continued he, “though these people are too civil to me by half, I would prefer a piece of salt junk and a biscuit with a countryman, to the finest dinner with your French people; for, some how or other, I don’t over and above like their ways.” The cosmopolite philanthrophist will here doubtless pity that ignorance, which thus creates national partiality and perpetuates national jealousy. But though we may desire to see this narrow prejudice swept from the minds of persons in the higher classes, God forbid that ever the genuine John Bull should be so far enlightened. While every English soldier and sailor is intimately convinced that he is equal to two Frenchmen in any kind of fight, there is little danger of his not supporting that superiority; but let him once begin to doubt if a Frenchman is not as good as an Englishman, and the odds are entirely done away. With respect to national hatred, however, there is, to use the old adage, very little love lost between the French and ourselves, but the causes are very different: they envy us, but we despise them. –– “I hate a Frenchman,” says Goldsmith’s old soldier, “because he’s a slave and wears wooden shoes!”

This being the anniversary of the much lamented death of General Sir Ralph Abercrombie, under whom Major Popham and myself had served, we dined together, and did not fail to drink to the memory of that good and gallant officer.

March 22. The following day I dined with Mr. Thompson, at whose house the Mayor and a polite party met in the evening. In the morning I had a very early and unexpected visit from the Commissary of Police, who desired to see my passport, and after reading it observed, “that my servant’s name was not inserted in it;” then putting it in his pocket departed, saying “he would return in a few minutes.” In fact, he very soon re-appeared, accompanied by a corporal, four soldiers, and three gend’armes, one of whom held a piece of rope in his hand. I was at a loss to divine what their intention was; but the Commissary soon let me know, that my servant’s name not being in my feuille de route, he must go to prison till the Emperor’s pleasure could be known.” “A very interesting subject indeed to the Emperor!” said I; “but pray, Monsieur, why all this formidable preparation? a single gend’arme might, I should sup" pose, have been sufficient to secure an unarmed man, and you would have besides avoided drawing a mob round the house.” To this he made no reply, except by a look of official consequence, and a gend’arme proceeded to pinion the poor fellow with the rope, and then putting a noose over his thumb, twisted it tight with a bit of stick. Thus secured he was driven into the street, where a great crowd was assembled. Lest the people might believe that he was taken up for a robbery, or some other heinous crime, I told them it was entirely owing to the stupidity of a clerk, who had omitted inserting his name, as my servant, in the passport; then turning to the Commissary, “now, Sir,” said I with a sneer, “have but the kindness to draw your sword, and the scene will be complete.” He grumbled something in rage, which making me laugh, the whole mob also set up a roar, which almost put him into a convulsive passion. He however marched off the man, and confined him in a subterraneous dungeon.

I immediately waited on the Mayor, in whose company I had spent the preceding evening, and in whose liberal manners I was not mistaken, for he immediately ordered the man to be released, and reprimanded the Commissary, who he informed me had only been in office a few days, and, he imagined, wished to give a brilliant proof of his zeal. This fellow called on me afterwards, I suppose to make an apology, but I desired him to go about his business.

March 23. The following day, the birth of the King of Rome was known by an express from Paris, and announced by les affiches in the streets, directing a general illumination, and pompously declaiming on the joyful event, which fixed the destinies of the French nation, and which every true Frenchman must hail as the greatest blessing from Heaven! I remained a considerable time pretending to read one of these affiches, to observe the people collected for the same purpose; and although none made any verbal comments, it was easy to read the expression of their sentiments in their countenances. A few seemed to read it with indifference, but not one skewed the slightest movement of approbation. Among the crowd a barber particularly amused me; for though he was as silent as the rest, his sharp nose, whimsical countenance, and comic shrugs, were supereminently characteristic of a Frenchman bursting with the desire, but afraid to speak. The illumination was most miserable, and reminded me of Milton’s darkness visible.

March 24. In passing through the street the next morning, a fellow blowing a French horn, and surrounded by a great crowd, attracted my attention. I found he was one of the numerous corps of itinerant sleight of hand performers, who infest every part of France, and who certainly would not be allowed to vagabondize about the country, if they were not of some utility. The fact is, that they are all spies of the police; and therefore not only tolerated, but paid, in order to discover and report the opinions of the people. In the course of their tricks these fellows make some humourous allusion to the government and its measures, and their companions, who are dispersed amongst the crowd, watch for the remarks and even the gestures that it occasions. Should any one be indiscreet enough to speak his opinion too openly, though no immediate notice is taken of him, he is almost to a certainty arrested some days after and thrown into a dungeon; from which if he ever comes out, it is only to be placed under the surveillance de la haute police, a punishment nearly as bad as imprisonment; for he cannot absent himself twenty-four hours from his residence without the permission of the officers of police, before whom he is obliged to appear once a week; and who have also the right of paying him a domiciliary visit by night or day, to examine his papers, and, if they choose, to arrest him, without any form of law or assigning any reason. It short, to make him suffer all the vexations that the subaltern agents of a despotic and suspicious government are always so willing to inflict when they have the power. How may Old England bless the memory of those Barons bold, who, in the field of Runnimede, forced a tyrant to accord the palladium of liberty! how may Britons pride themselves in that constitution and those laws, which establish and preserve the true rights of man, in the protection of property, personal liberty, and the equal distribution of justice!

The forced rejoicings for the birth of an heir to the empire were the following day succeeded by real sorrow and consternation at the failure of the house of Tassien, supposed to be the richest in the country. Its deficit was three millions of francs; a sum which, even in England, would be considered as of consequence, but which in France, where there is so little capital, is enormous. This house carried on an extensive woollen manufacture, the ramifications of which were spread all over the neighbouring departments, and gave employment to a great quantity of persons, who, as well as a vast number of retail dealers, were entirely ruined by its failure. This event supplied the whole conversation of the coffee-rooms; for being debarred talking politics, the frequenters of these places catch with avidity at any thing that affords them an opportunity of setting their tongues in movement. I visited several of these rooms, and found that instead of coffee the decrees of Buonaparte had forced the substitution of sugar or sirup and water, a small glass of which costs two sous, while a cup of coffee costs twelve, and is consequently far above the pocket of the generality of the coffee-house loungers, whose chief inducement in frequenting these places is to kill time or save firing. For the former purpose, the rooms are furnished with chess and backgammon boards; and two persons will sit down to a party at trictrac for four hours, for a stake of two sous, or perhaps a bottle of four sous, which nobody but Frenchmen could swallow; and which, being little better than vinegar, is probably the predominating cause of the maigreur of the men, as the women, who drink only water, have in general quite sufficient embonpoint. A billiard table is also an invariable appendage to a French coffee-room, and during the day is never unemployed; but at night it is seldom occupied, from the expense of lighting it up.

On the first of April I quitted Orleans, and travelled on a very wide and well kept road, which evinced, as I proceeded, the approach to the capital, in the frequent towns, villages and châteaux. Few of the latter are however now occupied by their owners, who, as I have before observed, generally prefer residing in Paris, and leave these noble seats in the charge of agents or farmers; while the still existing fear of their being reclaimed, prevents their spending any money in their repairs or embellishments. Such indeed is the general idea of the insecurity of the titles to confiscated property, that it sells for thirty per cent less than patrimonial or church property. Many of the châteaux of the antient noblesse have also become the property of their servants, who, by the plunder of their masters, and the means of assignats, were enabled to purchase these mansions, which they have not funds to keep in repair.

I slept this night at the town of Etampes, and next morning (April 2) after passing through a highly cultivated country, arrived at Arpajon, near which are several deserted châteaux, particularly one formerly belonging to the Marshal de Castries. In this little town, as well as in every other between it and Paris, the traveller finds tables d’hôte at all hours, for the accommodation of passengers in the stages.

On entering the capital I preferred passing round by the Boulevards, to parading through the streets, and arrived opposite the palace of the Corps Législatif, formerly the Palais Bourbon, but which has been so altered .and improved since my last visit to Paris, that I did not know it again. The front towards the bridge is now decorated with a rich and regular colonnade, with statues of Sully, Colbert, l’Hôpital and d’Aguesseau. The two grand doors are of solid mahogany with gilt stars, and the peristyles of white marble richly carved. Having gratified myself with a general view of the exterior of this edifice, I crossed the Pont Louis XVI. and entered the Place Louis XV. now Pont and Place de la Concorde. This bridge is the last in Paris towards Versailles, and though the river is not here wide enough to render it magnificent, is deserving of notice, for its simplicity and good taste. Passing along the Quai de la Conférence, I entered the Place de la Concorde, one of the finest in Paris, being a parallelogram of one hundred and twenty toises by eighty. On the side fronting the river are the magnificent edifices of the Hôtels de la Marine and de Courlande; on the right the gardens of the Thuilleries, and on the left the Champs-Elisées, of which the gardens command a view. The reflections that forced themselves on me in passing this place were not of the most cheerful kind, when I recollected that since I visited it before the revolution, the weak, but well meaning and unfortunate Louis had brought his head to the block, and here shed his own blood, because he would not permit the shedding of that of some of his subjects’; while crowds of his most faithful adherents had here also shared the same fate.

Being now arrived almost at the end of my long journey, over nearly the whole breadth of France, my readers will permit me to sum up the few general observations my mode of travelling permitted me to make, and which, though necessarily superficial, I trust will afford some information respecting the actual state of the country.

The very few equipages met with on the roads that could possibly be mistaken for gentlemen’s, is the first great difference that strikes an Englishman between this country and his own. Except in the vicinity of the very large towns, a few single horse chaises, or covered carts, and an occasional creeping diligence, alone shew any symptom of communication between the different parts of the empire. The peasantry whom I have had occasion to converse with, universally complain of the conscription; of the requisition of their horses and carts without payment, for the use of the army of the billetting of soldiers, and of the heaviness of their taxes, in general; but particularly of those on wine, salt and tobacco. As a general proof of the poverty of the towns, may be adduced the very few houses building, or that have been built since the revolution.

In most of the towns I observed that the streets and places which underwent republican baptism, have resumed their antient names, except where they recall the remembrance of the unfortunate Bourbon family. Even the names derived from the religious orders have been restored, and the Rue des Augustins, des Capucins, &c. have again superseded those of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. The antient names of streets are indeed a kind of historical records, and therefore should never be changed; for though no longer appropriate they carry us back to the time when they were, and afford a field of entertaining and instructive inquiry, both to the native and the foreigner. Such are in London, the White Friars, the Old Jewry, Lombard Street, and many others.

In the national character, the revolution seems to have made no perceptible alteration. The French are still what Voltaire describes them, a compound of the tiger and the monkey: under the monarchy, the sanguinary disposition was concealed by the mark of external politeness, and the monkey then predominated; the revolution opened an unbounded field to the exercise of natural cruelty, and the incessant wars in which their rulers have ever since kept them, have nourished and perfected that disposition. Their wars, indeed, instead of being conducted on those principles of generosity, which the French in particular formerly prided themselves on, are wars of brigandage and extermination. That of Spain, in particular, presents a tissue of atrocities and wanton cruelties, that must render the name of a French soldier execrable to the latest posterity.

The scarcity of men forcibly strikes a stranger travelling in France. In villages of one hundred houses, I have never been able to count above half a dozen old men, and scarce a youth is to be seen in the country. The greatest share of field labour falls on the women, who, when they have infants, bandage them up like Egyptian mummies, and set them down in the corner of the field to squall their lungs away, while they follow the plough or turn up the ground with a spade. At the post houses the duty of the ostler is usually performed by females; and, as I have before observed, the attendants at the auberges are invariably strapping wenches, whose loquacity and familiarity are equally tiresome and obtrusive. That this scarcity of men is entirely owing to the waste of war, there cannot be the smallest doubt, when it is known for fact, that since the year 1793, thirty thousand conscripts have been raised for a single regiment.