The Sun.
London, England, 1865-09-06 00:00:00

HO

(From the Times' Correspondent)
BADEN-BADEN, Sept. 3.

It is necessary to come to Baden during the race
week to see what the lovers of strong language call
" the Queen of all Hells" in full blaze. It is well
to protest, however, that if by that royal title we
are to understand the greatest of all gambling-
places the appellation would be misapplied ; for the
green table-cloth is by no means the all-in-all to
Baden ; play does not assume the great proportions
nor exhibit the repulsive features that it displays,
for instance, at Homburg ; and the people comme it
foot, who are the vast majority here, do not give
their countenance to the jingling-rooms at the Con-
versation-Haus at all.

Indeed, as the contract of M. Benazet with the
Grand-Duke of Baden is limited to a time which is
to expire at the end of two years, and as it is con-
fidently asserted that no such convention will be
entered into again at any future time, people begin
to speculate as to what Baden is to become when
stripped of what is considered its chief attraction,
particularly should the Duke of Nassau be more
tolerantof rouge-et-noir at the rival establishments
on the skirts of the Thames. There is no doubt,
however, that if any bathing-place can exist and
thrive without gambling, that place is certainly
Baden-Baden. An English friend of mind who
came in yesterday had to drive about literally for
four hours, from hotel to lodging-house, before he
could find shelter of any description. Now, an
immense part of this all-invading crowd has been
brought hither by the races, and there will most
assuredly be plenty of breathing room towards the
end of next week, when the last steeplechases are
run. The Paris Jockey Club drags the whole elite
of the faubourgs along with it. You hear the greatest
names, Praslin, La Rochefoucauld, d'Arenberg, &c.,
bandied about here as if they were mere Browns,
Joneses, and Robinsons ; with them the highest
Russian, Prussian, Polish, Spanish, Italian, become
equally familiar. We have scores of Neapolitan
Bourbonist emigre's, the whole diplomacy of Frank-
fort and Stuttgart, Berne, Berlin, and Vienna.
Baden is at this moment a Parisian suburb, some-
thing like Chantilly at the spring race meeting.
'There is a cosmopolite set of people at Paris who
belong to each other, and are not to be seen any-
where without one another—a cosmopolite set, yet
so cast into one mould that all its extraneous ele-
ments, no matter of what nation, take a uniform
French polish ; a French and Parisian polish, if you
please, yet which is special, conventional, in France
and in Paris itself. It is not altogether the Court
polish, nor yet that of the ancien regime. It has an
eclectic accommodating character, with great powers
of compromise and adoption. It is a world of itself,
apart from the political, above all national predilec-
tion or antipathy—a world of caste. People think
a great deal of blood in that set; a great deal of
high-sounding names ; a little of money; an immense
deal of pleasure. It is prodigious to think of the crop-
ping up of lofty aristocratic patronymics in French
society of late years. There is a gap in mediaeval his-
tory about the 11th century, beyond which it is hard
for the proudest families to trace their descent. There
is such another hiatus in French pedigrees brought
about by the guillotine, and by the boutiquiere
policy of Louis Philippe. Across both these chasms
it is given to heralds and genealogists to exercise
their inventive powers. The real French nobles are
in no way particular as to the intrusion of plausible
candidates into their sacred coteries. The mere
aspiration to rank is a homage paid to its import-
ance at an age and in a community in which at-
tempts have twice been made to drag it into the
dust, and for ever to deprive it of its solid advantages.
Well, the whole of that Parisian grande monde,
with all its variety of tongues, manners, and prin-
ciples, is here now; for it is either to be seen all
together or not at all. Baden is one of its regular
yearly haunts. Here are its pied-a-terre, its rendez-
vous, its organised round of duties and pleasures.
There are English Duchesses, Russian Princesses,
with ready-made salons in their Qwn permanently-
occupied villas. There are Countesses of a very old
date aspiring to the honour of giving Royalty a ball,
and attaining their object. But for the rest, when
I speak of the Parisian world as being here, it must
be understood that I have by no means said " the
world and its wife." The grandes (lames of the
French salons do not show here. The men come
here, like Romulus's outcasts on the Aventine, lack-
ing their better hale es. I hear it said that the ab-
sence of the French ladies of rank was owing to
some blunders of the "Administration," which
allowed an undue precedence to the Russian ladies
at some of the festivities in former years, thereby
giving unpardonable offence both to the French
ladies and also to some of the touchy gentlemen of
other nations, chiefly the English.
Possibly the came of this temporary divorce be-
tween'the sexes among the French may be found in
something very different from mere feminine punc-
tilio. We have here faubourg life in all its nakedness,
and want no Devil on Two Sticks to lift the roofs

over our neighbours' houses. In very truth I ques-
tion whether Paris, suburban, can be seen at so ra-
pid a glance on the banks of the Seine as it is here
exhibited before us on the Oos. It is Paris without
the roll of the drums, the throng of the Boulevards,
the racket of the Champs Elysees, the terror of the
Tuileries—Paris of the Empire, but with it Paris of
the Restoration, Paris of the Regency. I said the
male grand monde is here, likewise the female demi-
monde. French society hasreached the utmost degree
of Athenian refinement. It has attained a peculiar
organisation, the main feature of which is absence of
all restraint or concealment. We have heard of balls
in Paris given by a certain class of young ladies to
their intimate acquaintance among a certain class of

young gentlemen. Well, I believe the whole set that
attended that festivity, guests and hostesses, are all
here. An alliance, offensive and defensive, has been
got up between them. They acknowledge each other
fearlessly, and defy the world. It is the beau-ideal
of Athenian civilisation, save, perhaps, that the
lletxrm have not, in all instances, the musical, ar-
tistical, or political accomplishments of so many
Aspasias. Some peculiar talents they must have
nevertheless, seeing the strong hold they have on
their high-bred associates, the grand train they go,
the style they live in, their handsome rooms in the
hotels, their maisons garnies, their glittering car-
riages, their gorgeous attire, their blaze of jewels. It
is something to see such high homage paid in our 111
times to Athenian taste ; something more to see it
Bo publicly, so ostentatiously paid. For do the two
sexes, so strangely brought together, only live freely
before the world. The whole mass crowd toge-
ther ; they constitute one community, as it were,
one menage. Wehave come as close upon the golden
dreams of St. Simonianism as it is possible to con-
ceive. He who has achieved the conquest of. Beauty
does not hide it under a bushel ; he wears
it like a
flower in his button-hole. He is anxious for the
world to come in for its share of its brilliancy and
fragrance. 'The possession of such a treasure is too
much for any one man. Indeed, it is often clearly
stipulated, and more frequently understood, in
such connexions that there is to be no monopoly
joint partnership is the rule rather than the excep-
tion ; and there are Aspasias who have their Mon-
day Pericles, who come out with their Tuesday Cleon,
try their luck at the roulette table with their Wed-
nesday Alcibiades, and so on through the week. All
this is perfectly understood and organised by com-