Rollo in Paris Part 9

They turned round and beheld their uncle George. They were, of course, very much astonished to see him. He was walking with another young gentleman, a friend of his from America, whom he had accidentally met with in Paris. When the children had recovered from the surprise of thus unexpectedly meeting him, he repeated his question.

"What do you think of the obelisk?"

"I don't believe it is so high," replied Rollo, "as the column in the Place Vendome."

"No," replied Mr. George, "it is not."

"Nor so large," added Rollo.

"No," said Mr. George.

"And I don't believe that there is any way to get to the top of it,"

added Rollo.

"No," said Mr. George, "there is not. The column in the Place Vendome is hollow, and has a staircase inside; but this obelisk is solid from top to bottom, and is formed of one single stone. That is the great wonder of it."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE OBELISK.]

"Look up," said Mr. George, "to the top of it. It is as high as a steeple. See how large it is, too, at the base. Think how enormously heavy such an immense stone must be. What a work it must have been to lift it up and stand it on its end! Besides, it does not rest upon the ground, but upon another monstrous stone, the pedestal of which is nearly thirty feet high; so that, in setting it up in its place, the engineers had not only to lift it up on end, but they had to raise the whole ma.s.s, bodily, twenty or thirty feet into the air. I suppose it was one of the greatest lifts that ever was made.

"There is another thing that is very curious about the obelisk,"

continued Mr. George, "and that is its history. It was not made originally for this place. It was made in Egypt, thousands and thousands of years ago, n.o.body knows how long. There are several others of the same kind still standing. Some years ago, this one and another were given to the French by the government of Egypt, and the French king sent a large company of men to take this one down and bring it to Paris. They built an immense vessel on purpose for transporting it. This vessel they sent to Egypt. It went up the Nile as near to the place where the obelisk stood as it could go. The place was called Luxor. The obelisk stood back at some distance from the river; and there were several Arab huts near it, which it was necessary to pull down. There were also several other houses in the way by the course which the obelisk must take in going to the river. The French engineers bought all these houses, and pulled them down. Then they made a road leading from the place where the obelisk stood to the river. Then they cased the whole stone in wood, to prevent its getting broken or injured on the way. Then they lowered it down by means of immense machines which they constructed for the purpose, and so proceeded to draw it to the river. But with all their machines, it was a prodigiously difficult work to get it along. It took eight hundred men to move it, and so slowly did it go that these eight hundred men worked three months in getting it to the landing.

There they made a great platform, and so rolled it on board the float.

There was a steamer at hand to take it in tow, and it was brought to France. It then took five or six months to bring it across the country from the sea sh.o.r.e to Paris.

"When, at last, they got it here, it took them nearly a year to construct the machines for raising it. They built the pedestal for it to stand upon, which you see is as high as a two-story house, and then appointed a day for the raising. All the world, almost, came to see.

This whole square was full. There were more than a hundred thousand persons here. The king came, and his family, and all his generals and great officers. It was the greatest raising that ever was seen."

"Why, there must have been just as great a raising," said Rollo, "when they first put it up in Egypt."

"No," said Mr. George; "because there it stood nearly upon the ground, but here it is on the top of a lofty pedestal. Look there! Those are pictures of the machines which they raised it by."

So saying, Mr. George pointed to beautifully gilded diagrams which were sculptured upon one side of the pedestal. There were beams, and ropes, and pulleys without number, with the obelisk among them; but Rollo could not understand the operation of the machinery very well. The obelisk itself was covered on all sides with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, deeply cut into the stone; but the children could not understand the hieroglyphics any better than they could the machinery.

After looking some time longer at the obelisk and the various objects of interest that were around it, the whole party walked on together. Mr.

George said that he and his friend were going up the avenue of the Elysian Fields, and that, if Rollo and Jennie would walk along behind them, they would not get lost. Jennie was very glad of this; for the crowd of people that were coming and going was getting to be very great, and she was a little afraid. Rollo, on the other hand, was rather sorry.

The Triumphal Arch at the farther end of the avenue was in full view, and thus he felt sure of his way; and he was ambitious of the honor of being the sole guide in the excursion which he and Jane were taking. He, however, could not well decline his uncle's invitation; so, when the two gentlemen moved on, Rollo and Jennie followed them.

The Grand Avenue was a very broad and beautiful roadway, gently ascending toward the barrier, and now perfectly thronged with carriages and hors.e.m.e.n. There were also two side avenues, one on each side of the central one. These were for foot pa.s.sengers. There were rows of trees between. Beyond the side avenues there extended on either hand a wood, formed of large and tall trees, planted in rows, and standing close enough together to shade the whole ground. They were, however, far enough apart to allow of open and un.o.bstructed motion among them. Under these trees, and in open s.p.a.ces which were left here and there among them, there were booths, and stalls, and tables, and tents, and all sorts of contrivances for entertainment and pleasure, with crowds of people gathered around them in groups, or moving slowly from one to the other. There were men, some dressed like gentlemen, and others wearing blue, cartmen's frocks; and women, some with bonnets and some with caps; and children of all ages and sizes; and soldiers without number, with blue coats, and dark-red trousers, and funny caps, without any brim, except the visor. In the midst of all these mult.i.tudes Mr. George and the gentleman who was with him slowly led the way up the side avenue, Rollo and Jennie following them, quite bewildered with the extraordinary spectacles which were continually presenting themselves to view on every hand. The attention of the children was drawn from one object or incident to another, with so much suddenness, and so rapidly, that they had no time to understand one thing before it pa.s.sed away and something else came forward into view and diverted their thoughts; and before they had recovered from the surprise which this second thing awakened, they had come to a third, more strange and wonderful, perhaps, than either of the preceding.

A boy, very young, and very fantastically dressed, came riding along through the crowd, mounted on the smallest and prettiest black pony that Rollo had ever seen, and distributing as he pa.s.sed along some sort of small printed papers to all who came near enough to get them. Rollo tried to get one of the papers to see what it was, but he did not succeed.

"How I wish I had such a pony as that!" said Rollo.

"So do I," said Jennie. "But what are the people doing in that ring?"

Rollo saw a close ring of people all crowding around something on the ground. There was a man inside the ring, calling out something very loud and very incessantly. Rollo put his head between two of the spectators to see. There was a man seated in the centre, on the ground, with a cloth spread out before him, on which was a monstrous heap of stockings, of all kinds and colors, which he was selling as fast as possible to the men and women that had gathered around him. He sold them very cheap, and the people bought them very fast. He put the money, as fast as he received it, in his cap, which lay on the ground before him, and served him for a cash box.

"Come, Rollo," said Jane, pulling Rollo by the hand, "we must go along.

Uncle George is almost out of sight."

Rollo turned back into the avenue again, and began to walk along. In a moment more he saw a large boy standing behind a curious-looking stove in an open s.p.a.ce near, and baking griddle cakes. There was a very nice table by his side, covered with a white cloth, and a plate, on which the boy turned out the griddle cakes as fast as they were baked. There were several children about him, buying the cakes and eating them.

"Ah, Jennie," said Rollo, "look at these cakes! How I should like some of them! If it were not that it is Sunday, I would go and buy some."

"O Rollo!" exclaimed Jennie, "look here! See what's coming!"

Rollo looked, and saw that the ladies and gentlemen on the broad walk before them were moving to one side and the other, to make room for a most elegant little omnibus, drawn by six goats, that were harnessed before it like horses. The omnibus was made precisely like a large omnibus, such as are used in the streets of Paris for grown persons; only this one was small, just large enough for the goats to draw. It was very beautifully painted, and had elegant silken curtains. It was full of children, who were looking out the windows with very smiling faces, as if they were enjoying their ride very much. A very pretty little boy, about seven years of age, was holding the reins of the goats, and appearing to drive; but there was a large boy walking along by the side of the goats all the time, to take care that they did not go wrong. The omnibus belonged to his father, who kept it to let children ride in it on their paying him a small sum for each ride.

Jennie was very much pleased with the omnibus; but what followed it pleased her still more. This was a carriage, made in all respects like a real carriage, and large enough to contain several children. It was open, like a barouche, so that the children who were riding in it could see all around them perfectly well. It had two seats inside, besides a high seat in front for the coachman, and one behind for the footman.

There were children upon all these seats. There was one on the coachman's box to drive. The carriage, like the omnibus, was drawn by goats, only there were four instead of six. The coachman drove them by means of long, silken reins.

As soon as the omnibus and the carriage had pa.s.sed by, and the crowd had closed again behind them so as to conceal them from view, Rollo and Jennie looked about for Mr. George and the other gentleman; but they were nowhere to be seen. Jane was quite frightened; but Rollo said he did not care.

"Look there!" said Rollo, pointing back.

"What is it?" said Jennie.

"The obelisk," said Rollo.

Jane saw the tall, needle-like form of the obelisk towering into the air from the middle of the great square behind them, and a part of the long front of the Tuileries, at the end of a vista of trees, far beyond.

"As long as we have the obelisk in sight," said Rollo, "we cannot get lost."

Just then Rollo's attention was called to a broad sheet of paper fastened up upon a tree that he was pa.s.sing by. He stopped to see what it was. A little girl, about as old as Jennie, came up at the same time, leading the maid who had the care of her by the hand. This child began to read what was printed on the card. She read aloud, enunciating the words very slowly, syllable by syllable, and in a voice so clear, and rich, and silvery, that it was delightful to hear her. She seemed pleased to observe that Rollo and Jane were listening to her; and when she got through she turned to them, as if to apologize for not reading better, and said, in French, and with a pleasant smile upon her countenance,--

"I am learning to read; but I cannot read too much yet, you see."

By too much she meant very well, that being the way that the French express themselves in such a case.

Rollo understood what she said, but he did not think it prudent to attempt to reply in the same language; so he said simply, in English,--

"And yet I think my father would give five hundred dollars if I could read French like that. He'd be _glad_ to do it."

As Rollo spoke these words the child looked earnestly in his face, the smile gradually disappearing from her features and being replaced by a look of perplexity and wonder. She then turned and led the maid away.

There were a great many booths and stands about, some in open s.p.a.ces and some under the trees. At one they had all sorts of cakes for sale; at another toys of every kind, such as hoops, b.a.l.l.s, kites, balloons, rocking horses, and all such things; and at a third pictures, some large, some small, some plain, and some beautifully colored. At one place, by the side of the avenue where most of the people were walking, there stood a man, with a tall and gayly-painted can on his back. It was covered with common drapery below; but the top was bright, and towered like a spire above the man's head. There was a round bar, like the leg of a chair, which went from the bottom of the can to the ground, to support it, and take the weight off the man's shoulders when he was standing still. The man was standing still now, and was all the time tinkling a little bell, to call the attention of the people to what he had to sell. It was something to drink. There were two kinds of drink in the can, separated from each other by a division in the interior. There were two small pipes, one for each kind of drink, leading from the bottom of the can round by the side of the man to the front, with stopc.o.c.ks at the end, where he could draw out the drink conveniently.

There was also a little rack to hold the gla.s.ses. There were three gla.s.ses; for the man sometimes had three customers at a time. While Rollo and Jane were looking at this man, a boy came up for a drink. The man took one of the gla.s.ses from the little rack, and filled it by turning one of the stopc.o.c.ks. When the boy had taken his drink and paid the money, the man wiped the gla.s.s with a towel which he kept for the purpose; and then, putting it back in its place on the rack, he went on tinkling his little bell.

In the mean time, the crowd of people seemed to increase, and it appeared to Rollo and Jennie, when they came to observe particularly, that they were nearly all walking one way, and that was up the avenue, as if there were some place in that direction where they were all going.

Rollo supposed that, of course, it was a church. He had been told by his father, when they were travelling in England, that when he was in any strange place on Sunday, and wished to find the way to church, one good method was to observe in the streets whenever he saw any considerable number of people moving in the same direction, and to join and follow them. He would, in such cases, his father said, be very sure to be conducted to a church, and after going in he would generally find some one who would show him a seat. Rollo and Jennie had often practised on this plan. In fact, they took a particular interest and pleasure in going to church in this way, as there was something a little of the nature of adventure in it.

When, accordingly, the children observed that the great ma.s.s of the people that filled the two side avenues, as well as the carriages that were in the central one, were all moving steadily onward together, paying little attention to the booths, and stalls, and other places and means of amus.e.m.e.nt which were to be seen under the trees on either hand, he concluded that, while some of the people of Paris were willing to amuse themselves with sports and exhibitions on Sunday, the more respectable portion would not stop to look at them, but went straight forward to church; and he and Jennie resolved to follow their example.

"I should like to see all these things very much," said Rollo, "some other day; but now we will go on, Jennie, to the church, where the rest of the people are going."

Jennie very cordially approved of this plan, and so they walked on together. It happened that, at the time when they came to this determination, there was walking just before them a party, consisting apparently of a father and mother and their two children. The father and mother walked together first, and the two children, hand in hand, followed. The oldest child was a girl, of about Jennie's age. The other was a very small boy, just beginning to learn to talk. Rollo and Jennie came immediately behind these children, and were very much interested in hearing them talk together, especially to hear the little one prattling in French. He called his sister Adrienne, and she called him Antoine.

Thus Rollo and Jennie knew the names of the children, but they had no way of finding out what were the names of the father and mother.