01-081 [Family]
1883.07.5 Paris, 124 Rue de Rennes, Quartier Latin
From: José Rizal
To: Parents and brothers
Tour of Paris continued — National Panorama — Palace of Industry — Hotel Dieu — Museum of Orfila — Jardin des Plantes — Luxemburg Palace — Hotel des Invalides.
* * *
Paris, 124 Rue de Rennes, Quartier Latin[1]
5 July 1883
MY DEAR PARENTS AND BROTHERS,
In my previous letter of the 21st or 22nd June I gave you some slight information about the various buildings and monuments that I have seen in this great city. As a mail boat is leaving tomorrow for that part of the world, I write you this to continue giving you some ideas, however slight, of all that I have seen since then.
It seems to me that in my previous letter I concluded with my visit to the Jardin d’Acclimatation. I shall begin then with the Summer Circus. This is an arena or circus like any other set aside for gymnastics or equestrian performances located almost at the end of the Champs Elysées. The artists who perform there are of the kind of Chiriani,[2] though inferior in quality and number to those of the Italian impresario. However, despite the fact that Paris is a capital of numberless entertainments and despite the mediocrity and slight importance of this spectacle, the theater is always full to the brim, doubtless owing to the many foreigners who invade it and the many ventures – men and women – who seem to have made rendezvous there.
The National Panorama[3] is like all those of its kind. If you remember those of Marseille and Madrid that I described to you previously, you can form an approximate idea of it. Only that in that of Paris can be seen what it was in the time of the Franco- Prussian War. They are the Battle of Champigny and the horrors inside the City of Paris. This panorama as well as the Summer Circus and the Palace of Industry are all in the Champ Elysées of Monte Cristo.[4]
The Palace of Industry is a very big building constructed in 1855 and designed for diverse exhibitions of arts and trades. Admission usually costs 2 francs or 50 centimes on Sundays and Thursdays. There I saw an exhibition of Japanese painting and many men and women, principally foreign artists who took me for one from Japan, and they approached me and asked me for information about it. I gave them and told them all that I knew and when I could I escaped through the history of Japan and her old modern constitution. I spoke a little about the Japanese artists, whose biographies I knew, like Totsugueu, Senko, Nampo, and others. They asked me about their methods and they were enchanted. But then it occurred to one of the young ladies to ask me about the meaning of those characters written below the paintings and I found myself in a tight spot, for, fearing that there might be someone among those various visitors who understood Japanese characters, they would catch me in the very act of telling a lie. Then I told them that the mikado, having set up Japan in European style, had sent us to Europe since we were very young and we have become Europeanized, which, added to the difficulty of Japanese writing, which was not as simple as the European, explained why we have not studied our native tongue. In Europe, or rather in France, all those who are of our type and are dressed like them are Japanese (Chinese in Spain), just as over there all who wear a beard are called Castilas [Spaniards]. In this exhibition I saw also very beautiful paintings and sculptures by European artists, precious stones, antiquities, furniture belonging to different epochs, weapons, Indians, Muslim, and Hebrew books, tiles, jars, and others. I spent there about three hours, although I went around running, I admired above all a painting of a nymph asleep in moonlight among clouds and mist.
The Hotel Dieu is a big hospital of three stories, magnificently and hygienically built, with courts and gardens, on the Ile de la Cité on the Siene. It has five floors on each side. Taking us for some attachés of the embassy (without our telling it) they showed us everything including the kitchens which serve by means of small tramways. It is very clean and if I’m not mistaken, the hospital accommodates comfortably 300 patients. Inside one notes complete silence and circumspection. It is truly a refuge for the sick. It has magnificent verandas where convalescents take a walk.
The Museum of Orfila[5] is of the greatest importance to student of medicine. All can go there to study human and comparative anatomy including innermost secrets, from the dwarf to the giant, the fish to man, from the cell to the organ. There is a table made by an Italian and presented I believe, to Napoleon III. This table is made of human livers, intestines, bones, flesh, lungs, and ears. The learned Italian knew how to harden them in such a way that they became as hard as marble and these different substances of the human body formed fanciful designs; however I believe that there are many persons who will not dare eat on that table. This process is unknown, the secret having been lost, it seems.
There was also the picture of a famous dwarf, a nobleman, attired in the same garb he wore when he was living; he was scarcely three handbreadths tall. But the characteristic of this dwarf is that he is neither deformed nor hunchbacked nor is his head big like others; he is, on the contrary, very well proportioned: A head like an orange, proportional tiny hands, feet, and legs, and a very pleasant and winsome face. They say he was very learned, very affable and polite, and lived 30 years or more.
I saw there among various seeds casuy (acajou, pronounced acachu), and lumbang.[6] Free admission every day.
The Jardin des Plantes is the name of a large area very near the Seine, full of plants of different kinds, with museums of zoology, geology, and another of skeletons only. There was also an infinite number of animals. I was able only to go through the different sections for plants, to see the ducks, geese, deer, six or seven tigers, as many lions, (one lioness enclosed with a puppy), bears, panthers, wild boar, hogs, dogs, oxen, ounces, jaguars, large and small snakes, vipers, tortoises. eight or nine were crocodiles stretched out in the sun, fishes, etc.All of these were fed and tended in accordance with their different temperaments, like the boas and snakes with woolen blankets over them, the crocodiles with their ponds, the tortoises the same etc. The government has professors there to conduct courses in botany, zoology, geology free to the public. There are also gigantic skeletons of whales, cachalots, and other animals. I’m planning to come back some seven times to see the museums. The public is admitted free. I don’t know if I have already told you and if not, I’m going to say it now, that here the people go to free public gardens and promenades, the men to stroll or study, and also some women who bring their sewing baskets, sits on benches under the trees, and there work better than [in] their homes, and nobody bothers them. It is here that I see this for the first time, and thus they spend the day on Champ Elysées, Palais Royal, Luxemburg, Jarden Des Plantes, etc.
Here there are also water closets on the streets where for 15 centimes one can use them and they even provide one with soap. There is excessive cleanliness. [It] is very convenient in these big cities just like the free urinals profusely distributed as in Madrid also.
As to the Luxembourg Garden I have seen only a part of it. When I shall have seen it better, I’ll give you some information about it. Of the Luxembourg Palace I have seen only the museum of painting and sculpture of living artists. There are magnificent paintings there I knew through the illustrations in El Mundo Ilustrado[7] superb marble statues that it would be impossible for me to enumerate. The principal ones are those by Sulambo, “St. John the Baptist”, by Titian, Raphael, Da Vinci, and others. The French school is represented by all the artists from Clouet to those of our time and there art can be studied step by step. Attracting attention are two paintings by Lethiere[8] — “The Death of Cleopatra” and ”Brutus Condemning his Two Sons.” The father, as consul, is seated beside another who hides his face in his mantle; at Brutus’ feet lies the head of his son, his body being carried away by others; the executioner is standing; the other son is ready to die; they implore and beg the father to spare the life of his son: Brutus, inflexible, somber, silent, meditating, not daring to look at his son, with his hands twitched, is pallid. It is a sublime painting. Battles of Napoleon by Gros, and Endymion asleep in the moonlight, end the grand painting of “Cain and Abel” by Prud’hon. On this floor is located also what is called [the] Apollo Gallery, because of a painting of this god on the ceiling. One who has not seen this gallery cannot form an idea of what a palace would be like. Profusely decorated, gilt, painting, sculpture, precious stones vie for the attention of the dazed visitor… I refrain from describing it.
There is a hall in which the jewels of kings and queens are exhibited. Scepters, crowns, rings, necklaces, etc. Other halls are full of pencil, pen and sepia sketches by great painters. Other halls are full of Grecian, Roman, and Etruscan jars and amphorae taken from Pompeii and other excavations so numerous that there are enough for the whole province of Laguna.
On the third floor there are also paintings: The Museum of the Navy, the Chinese, and de Lesseps.
I believe that to study this museum well, one year, going there every day, would not suffice; in the superficial way I do it, three or four days are enough. It is open to the public except on Monday, and admission is free. There I saw the room and alcove where Henry IV died. Catherine de Medici must have walked through the same places as we do.
I saw last the Hotel des Invalides where the tomb of Napoleon I (in the church St. Louis), beneath the cupola, is. The tomb is simple, grandiose, imposing, worthy of the genius of the great man. In a circular crypt, 10 or 15 meters in diameter, is placed the sarcophagus of well-polished reddish stone; without unnecessary decorations. It is of a single piece, four meters long, two meters wide; it contains his remains. It is surrounded by a laurel wreath in mosaic and twelve colossal, white marble statues representing his most famous victories. Everything there is serious and imposing, and the light that comes from the cupola augments further the effects. Foreigners and even the English stand there fixedly in veneration and respect. Behind the main altar the entrance to the crypt made of dark marble with two colossal caryatides bearing crown, scepter, sword, and the globe on cushions. They seem to be the somber guardians – two giant guards guarding the sepulcher of a demi-god. Above are inscribed the words in his testaments.[9] Napoleon is surrounded by tombs of Bertrand, Duroc, Turenne, Vauban, Jerome and Joseph Bonaparte.[10]
From there one goes to [the] Museum of Artillery, of armors, where those of the most famous kings are, the guns of the Louis’s, Henry’s, and even Napoleon; the swords from the primitive ones of stone to those of the generals of the republic, empire, and restoration; Flags, trophies seized; cannons, Japanese and Chinese weapons, garbs of different warriors of Oceania, Africa, and America, armors of the Gauls, Greeks, and Romans – all on models. It seems incredible but the costumes and weapons of the savages of the small islands of Borneo are found there but those of the Philippines are not even remembered. There was also one of the Emperor of China, full of gold and diamonds, that was seized during the war.
The Hotel des Invalides is a grand edifice built by Louis XIV to provide shelter for the poor soldiers. It has 5,000 rooms, but only 600 live there. Everything there radiates discipline and there are old military men of those without legs, arms, etc. The spirit of Napoleon I pervades its atmosphere and that impression produced by the whole is special. It could be said that it is the mansion of remembrance, because I know not what loneliness there is wherever death, old age, and misfortune dwell. There is even a statue of a marshal of Napoleon with an amputated leg. It is refuge of the aged, victims of other men’s passions.
This is all that I have seen until now.
As you must have noted I’m now in the Latin Quarter because there where I was before [was] expensive and here I can live for less than six pesetas a day, moreover this house is much better.
Undoubtedly, whatever they may like to say, the French are very affable, at least on the outside, and this is noticeable not only among the upper classes but also among the poor and the middle class. As I was saying, I now live alone, because Zamora and Cunanan had gone to London. My landlady, Madame Desjardins, belongs to the middle class, as [do] we, my Comrade Juliana over there would say. Well then, the first day we are…
[The rest of the letter is missing]
[1] The Latin Quarter, the district in which are located the Sorbonne, Institute of France, and Luxembourg, famous for its Bohemian life.
[2] An Italian showman who brought a troupe twice to the Philippines; once in 1882 and again in 1890 or 1891.
[3] About the Panorama at Marseille, see his letter dated 23 June 1882.
[4] Rizal’s family possessed the biggest private library in Calamba, Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo was widely read in the Philippines and Rizal read it when he was only 12 years old, a student at the Atenéo Municipal
[5] Named after Mathieu Orfila (1787-1853). French physician, and chemist, who made important contributions to toxicology.
[6] Tangantangen or Solanum sanctum; tuba, Croton tiglium; lumbang, Aleuritis Molucca Wilid.
[7] An illustrated publication in Rizal’s home library at Kalamba.
[8] Guillaume Lethiére (1760-1832), a French painter.
[9] Above the entrance to the chapel of the Hotel Des Invalides were inscribed the following words:
“Je désire que mes cendres reposent sure les bords de la Seine au milieu de ce people francais que j’ai tant aimé.” (I wish my ashes to rest on the banks of the Siene amidst the French people I have loved so much.) This was written by Napoleon at St. Helena, where he was exiled, in the codicil to his testament on 16 April 1821, twenty days before his death. His wish was fulfilled on 15 December 1840 when his bones were brought to Paris and deposited in the chapel of the Hotel des Invalides by order of the King Louis Philippe of Orleans.
[10] Geraud Christophe-Michel Duroc (1772-1844), French general and grand marshal under the empire.
Count Henri-Geraud Bertrand (1773-1844), faithful side-de-camp of Napoleon I who stayed with him during the period of his Elbe and St. Helena. It was he who brought Napoleon’s bones to Paris in 1840.
Vicomte Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne Turenne (1611-1675), French marshal. Marquis Sebastian de Vauban (1633-1707), French military engineer and marshal of France.
Jerome Bonaparte (1784-1860), King of Westpahlia and marshal of France, brother of Napoleon I. Joseph Bonaparte (1768-1844), king of Spain. (1801-1813). Brother of Napoleon I.