Pencillings by the Way: Written During Some Years of Residence and Travel in EuropeWillis, Nathaniel Parker
General
Pencillings by the Way: Written During Some Years of Residence and Travel in Europe
Willis, Nathaniel Parker
Europe -- Description and travel
Honors of this sort must be a very great incentive. They are worn very
proudly in France. You see men of all classes, with the striped riband
in their button-hole, marking them as the heroes of the three days of
July. The Poles and the French and English, who fought well at Warsaw,
wear also a badge; and it certainly produces a feeling of respect as
one passes them in the street. There are several very young men, lads
really, who are wandering about Paris, with the latter distinction on
their breasts, and every indication that it is all they have brought
away from their unhappy country. The Poles are coming in now from
every quarter. I meet occasionally in society the celebrated Polish
countess, who lost her property and was compelled to flee, for her
devotion to the cause. Louis Philippe has formed a regiment of the
refugees, and sent them to Algiers. He allows no liberalists to remain
in Paris, if he can help it. The Spaniards and Italians, particularly,
are ordered off to Tours, and other provincial towns, the instant they
become pensioners upon the government.
I was presented last night, with Mr. Carr and Mr. Ritchie, two of our
countrymen, to the king. We were very naturally prepared for an
embarrassing ceremony--an expectation which was not lessened, in my
case, by the necessity of a laced coat, breeches, and sword. We drove
into the court of the Tuileries, as the palace clock struck nine, in
the costume of courtiers of the time of Louis the Twelfth, very
anxious about the tenacity of our knee-buckles, and not at all
satisfied as to the justice done to our unaccustomed proportions by
the tailor. To say nothing of my looks, I am sure I should have _felt_
much more like a gentleman in my _costume bourgeois_. By the time we
had been passed through the hands of all the chamberlains, however,
and walked through all the preparatory halls and drawing-rooms, each
with its complement of gentlemen in waiting, dressed like ourselves in
lace and small-clothes, I became more reconciled to myself, and began
to _feel_ that I might possibly have looked out of place in my
ordinary dress. The atmosphere of a court is very contagious in this
particular.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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