Show FRANCE L The Rage for Gold and the Craze for Overturning 0 Things Art and the People Special OorreipondenceOQ PARIS Feb 15 1882 While the financial crisis is dealIng deal-ing death and destruction around moralists are at work probing the seat of the disease and prescribing remedies about as efficacious as spermaceti sper-maceti to an inward bruise The drift of all the opinions is that society in general and France in particular is degenerating No one is content with that position i i life in which it has pleased God to call him Probity is becoming only a name honor has lost its fine edge and colossal rogues cease to be viewed as vulgar criminals in a word as with the Spartans sin if you like only do not let it be discovered dis-covered The thirst for gold the fever become suddenly rich the ambition to outshine your acquaintances acquain-tances and friends to dazzle the public to astonish the natives have of late become more intense as the epidemic extends Everything is universal suffrage fraternity politics poli-tics finance luxury and deception The noble wishes to be financier the financier noble the civilian to be militaire and the militaire civilian the governed to be the I governing the employed to be employer em-ployer the employer to be a legislator legis-lator and the legislator statesman and president The general desire is to become rich without work to abandon professions and careers to win fortunes onChange to have an insatiable appetite for luxury In France while the nobility aim to increase diminished incomes by marrying the daughters of wealthy tradesmen the sons of the latter endeavor en-deavor to secure social position by seeking wives in highborn rela tively penniless families To judge of the extent of the recent re-cent financial disasters and which are far from being terminated it is only necessary to visit Tattersals to I note the number of horses and equipages for sale or the public auction martwhere the most sumptuous sump-tuous furniture is piled And all these articles change hands with astonishing as-tonishing rapidity and as a matter of course In speculation sudden poverty on one side implies sudden poverty on the other The new plutocrats plu-tocrats however gaudy may be their outfits still possess a borrowed markthe daw with feathers not his own But the fortunate care nothing for such drawbacks Once in possession of unexpected wealth the husband purchases horses and vehicles for display at the Bois and the wife jewelry and laces to exhibit ex-hibit at the opera Their mansion is a museum furnished to daze their guests at their first soiree It is not Ia home but a club or a spectacle The luxury has no hall mark it is incapable of creating the feeling of grandeur is simply very successful success-ful as is said of a play well mounted Two public characters are at this moment in hot water 2ola and Donato The former refusing to I change the name of a barrister in i his loathsomejromancttPot Bouille now being published and that happens to correspond with that of a member of the bar of high standing has appeared in court where complainants council administered admin-istered a terrible castigation to Zola for his immoral productions Zola calls all the gods to tight for him but ordinary mortals display no sympathy for his mental torture and lacerated heart Donato has been coining since four months by magnetizingthe newer term for mesmerizing his medium Mile Lu cile and occasionally private individuals indi-viduals One Carmelli with his ward executes the same phenomena as Dunato assuring the audience beforehand they are for mans illusion illu-sion given The point at issue i plunging a needle into the arm without with-out the medium experiencing any pain Doctors here as usual differ some allege there are places where the absence of nerves allow of the operation being painlesslike the extraction of teeth perhaps the others again maintain the pain lies ever in tile incision of the skin cutting cut-ting into muscles and bone not being worth a moments sympathy The municipality is so rich that it has 50000000 francs to its credit in the treasury As the minister of finance will allow no interest on that little balance the municipal council intend wiping out in advance ad-vance three years interest and redemption re-demption instalments of the city loans and with the discount of 1000000 francs obtained ameliorate still further the educational facili tie of Paris The great ambition of retired picture pic-ture dealers is to possess a private gallery M Ge nes Petit has the fatter though not retired from business busi-ness he is too young too enamored of art to remain idle He has inherited in-herited not only his fathers wealth but taste judgment and probity asa as-a dealer in pictures where there exists ex-ists generally as much roguery as in selling horses As a fine arts auctioneer auc-tioneer Georges Petit before he retired re-tired inspired such confidence that collectionneurs placed themselves unreservedly in bis hands Twenty years ago many wealthy families that possessed only a few pictures i have now their galleries for paintings paint-ings constitute a part of modern luxury It is to Paris that valuable pictures are consigned when intended in-tended to be sold as the centre of taste Petit has a record of every valuable painting that has been brought to the hammer since half a century can give its history its < < e peregrinations its present whereabouts where-abouts and its successive augmentations I augmen-tations in price He has built a gallery at a cost of 3000000 francs with entrance on the rue de Seze It is capable of accommodating ac-commodating 1500 visitors who can move about or sit at their ease It is fitted up with every modern improvement for displaying of pictures pic-tures to the best advantage a magnificent mag-nificent red carpet for the floor the walls are of a delicate neutral brown and the lighting admirable ad-mirable It is a palace rather than an auctom room and supersedes the hotel liriot where pictures for sale are packed like sardines sar-dines in a box or mixed up with batteries de cuaine and brie a bac in general to say nothing of the peculiar pecu-liar public encountered suggesting a buttoning of pockets and the ap plcation of lettres de cachet for some kind of quarantine The water color artistsnever in tale odor of sanctity in France have inaugurated this new hall M Huil buth the painter par excellence of modern Parisiennes contributes the Terrace of St Germain one of the most splendid panoramas in the world with a beautiful r in white in a garden Detaille has an Episode Epi-sode of the Autumn Manoeuvres a spirited military sketch and the best water color he ever produced wherein he displays that surety of judgment for which he has become famed Gusta Dore as usual is full of powerful imagination and fantasy His scene from the Cour des Miracles the Beggars Rendezvous i Rendez-vous is picturesque and full of life London Docks exhibits the living activity of the great metropolis while his scene from the Tempest is what Shakespeare himself would applaud full of grace and fancy Dore is the artist of imagination and the authitesis of naturalism and all its repulsiveness John Lewis Brown exhibits several paintings embracing various subjects full of that animation and clearness for which he is celebrated In justness of tone and precise eclat of light he has few superiors The Opera Comique has brought out a oneact bagatelle Attendez moi sous 1 Orme the name of a popular air the libretto is adapted from Regnard the music by M dIndy The plot has quite an antique an-tique simplicity Atathe is the pretty and capricious daughter of a farmer she jilts her betrotned Col lin for Dorante a grandseigneur and at the same time a ruined fop to prove that Dorante only loves money one Lisette personates the role of a rich widow and Dorante is immediately hoisted Liszt would call this production a comedy illus trated by music The dialogues are too long M dIndy has done his best he has avoided the pimping style of Auber and the sparkling manner of Offenbach one of his airs has an uncommon likeness to the political refrain of Mme Angot 11e labors to find harmony and instrumentation in-strumentation that which throws a greyish tone over the whole scene The music is uninteresting because totally devoid of individuality The best played role is that of the false widow Mme Carlotta Patti hot the Pardeloup concert sang and brilliantly bril-liantly a bravoure air from Han dels Sampson Such an air is remarkable re-markable as being in an oratorio at all it would be even out of place in an opera again the air is also strange in being arranged for a trumpet accompaniment Meyer beer however united a soprano and a flute or rather two flutes MBurnacks melodramaLa Mar chande des Quatre Siussors costermonger cos-termonger has no plot he has forgotten for-gotten the receipt first catch your hare but there are scattered scenes in the eight tableaux very amusing The importance about the piece received with anything but favor is that the spectators seemed not to relish the common places of the slums and the ribaldness of the fish market We want no more coarse realisms on the stage even though they may be photos of popuar manners man-ners Since tIle success of the As sommoir authors have drawn too liberally on improprieties of the vile The coldnes extended to this piece seems 10 indicate a taste for what is cleanly There is nothing tofcrecord in the way of overturning cabinets no new idol has been smashed and measures for the regeneration of France promise to have precedence over those for humanity The Egyptian difficulty has entered into the quiet and diplomatic stage the English treaty of commerce is as much forgotten for-gotten as Gambetta the Intransi geants have degenerated into Opportunists Oppor-tunists as none of them exploded to mark the expulsion of the nihilist nihi-list Lawroff I nternational relations however between France and Russia Rus-sia do not depend on one or more Tartar home rulers being strung as high as King IIaman The French noble art of selfde fence according to Professor Char lemont reached its most brilliant period between 181555 One of the most beautiful modes of attack it seems is to administer a kick to your antagonist in the chest It is not half so graceful a movement asa as-a siren in the can can knocking off the hat of her vis a vis with her foot when the policemans back is turned In the nightup express from Nice recently a gentleman and his lady had just settled down in a first class compartment for the sleep of the just when a shaggy head and features fea-tures covered with blood lei down the window and endeavored to open the door the husband struck at Paul Pry with a bottle and his better half with a sandwich knife and fork while screaming cu are and murder The unfortuna e > later picked up was an ejcjued lunatic seeking protection Men have entertained even angels unawares I una-wares JI A debtor has published pamphlet on the Subject of the reform of the judicial bench He asserts tbit they are not the judges that ought to be suppressed but the baliffs A new court of appeal an accused having been condemned informed the tribunal he counted to establish his innocence at the Day of Judgment Judg-ment The latter event was nearly arrived ar-rived for some Parisians a few days I ago At2 in the morning the resi dents of a blind alley were roused I up by extraordinary trumpet blowing blow-ing it was a poor musieian ruined by the failure of a bank he was the angel Gabriel announcing the Day of Judgment |