The river press. [volume] (Fort Benton, Mont.) 1880-current, 1881-04-20
PARIS AT TWO EP0OHs.
The French Capital Now and q Century
Ago.
ILondon TRUTH

Ftg020 has executed cleverly an ingenious
idea il taking. on New Years day, its readers
a hundred years back. 1t shows them, from
the gazettes of q hundred years ago, what the
curt was doing at the Trianon. Marty Dhol-
sy, Ia Muetta, (now the habitation Of a piano
manufacturers he rs, Versailles, and Paris.
It tells them exactly how Rochambeau DIES
taing Lafayette and Lanzun Biron, of scam
pish memory, were passing the winter in
the New England states, then engagrd in
"Boycotting7 King Georges friends, and
fighting handfuls of King Georges troops.
Madame Campan is extensively drawn upon
for local color in the parts of the journal de-
voted to court life. She had the intellect and
style Of a femme de chambre, but as she saw
closely all that she described, extracts of her
memoir are interesting. The year 1880 was
marked by the death Of the queens mother,
the empress of Germany, and the she-s'king''
of Hungary. When Figaro was about old
court matters, it would have done well to
have dipped into the Maria Therese CORES
pondence, and exhumed the last letter ever
written by that great and good woman. It
is full of evil foreboding, and has the tragical
sound of the chorus in a play Of "Hschylus."
The old empress feels the coming storm
which is to rise at Versailles. She is tired Of
warning, and preaching and mannuvering to
keep young scamps out of the good graces
of the fair queen, to prevent prodigality and
unseemly frivolity, to strengthen the econom-
ic NJ. TurgOt against courtiers interested in
extravaganza, and to infuse a little circum-
spection into her light-brained daughter, who
ends BY turning sulky, and not answering her
mother epistles. So the empress-king throws
down once for all her pen, and trembling at
the future, which maternal and statesmanlike
divination reveals to her, tells the queen that
henceforth she will leave her to her own
foolish ways. Death came upon the imperial
maitresse femme shortly after her warning
voice was raised for the last time: and then
the scandal Of 'tle Collier de Ia Reine," burst
ing upon the world, justified her provisions.
Maria Therese had curiously enough lectured
the queen a good deal on her passion for dia-
monds. When [ read what she wrote on this
subject, | dc not feel entirely convinced that
we have yet got at the whole truth about the
diamond necklace affair. The old empress
king judged we'll from afar the character Of
the French nation she deemed the French
needless, giddy, fond Of novely, and still per
spicuous, vital and elastic. The retours, by
which she meant reactions against corruption
and folly, must need be, she thought Of ter
rible violence in such a nation, and she
dreaded the effect scandals would produce.
France is pretty much in our time v#4at it ap-
peared to Maria Therese, and scandals are
not less to be feared by the great ones of
1881 than they were by the ruling few, whom
prosperity had not demented, a hundred
years ago.
The new year has in some respects opened
auspiciously. The sun did as much honor to
the estimable President Grevy as if he had
been born in the purple. In the streets the
noise of gaity r%esounded. Money was freely
spent in shops and at the booths, and every
thing appeared for the best in the best Of
worlds. Still, | confess to a sentiment Of
uneasiness. AS surely as the bad smells
which offended our nostrils in the dog-days
BODIED typhoid fever, SO surely do the scan
turmoil and dangerous agitation. These
scandals have been jauntily disposed Of in
some quarters. They have been treated as
an unimportant disease Of the epidermis,
rrho~a.c tha,r ir1foato a Ianraro,c rnaIoHr
which the republic did not generate, but
which Republicans are interested in cleans
ing out of the blood. France is, in the pres
ent state of Europe, liable to become entan-
gled in foreign broils. If so entangled, she
would have small chance of victory unless
certain scandalous influences which, as in
1880 drew to an end, betrayed themselves,
are cut to the root. Soldiers will not fight
bravely when they suspect that statesmen and
generals are in the hands Of a Gree, who is
in the pay Of the enemy.
No more than the vendors Of those "puzzle
questions sold on the boulevards, in which
there is q cat, q dog, a Turks head or q
Greek statue to be discovered, can tell you
who the Gree is of such or such a statesman,
warrior, or prince Of journalists. | can only
assure you that Circes swarm here, and that,
if you come to Paris to seek for them you
will find whole nests of them. They are as
ISOLATED with wreckers of the Bourse, with
Americans driving O. trade with the war Office
in shoddy munitions and elibles, with specu-
lators in political reactions, and with jobbers
in the chamber, the municipal council and