produced from images available at The Internet Archive)

Every attempt has been made to replicate the original book as printed.
Some typographical errors have been corrected. (see list following the
text.) No attempt has been made to correct or normalize the printed
accentuation of names or words. (etext transcriber’s note)

[Illustration: ON THE CHAMPS ÉLYSÉES.]

                           OLD AND NEW PARIS

                Its History, its People, and its Places

                                   BY

                         H. SUTHERLAND EDWARDS

AUTHOR OF “IDOLS OF THE FRENCH STAGE” “THE GERMANS IN FRANCE” “THE RUSSIANS
                           AT HOME” ETC. ETC.

                                VOL. II

                     _WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS_

                      CASSELL AND COMPANY LIMITED

                       _LONDON PARIS & MELBOURNE_

                                  1894

                          ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

STREET CHARACTERS. PAGE

The “Cocher”--The Bus-driver--The Private Coachman--The Hackney
Coachman--The Public Writer--The Flower-girl--The Oyster-woman.....1

CHAPTER II.

THE ENGLISH AND AMERICANS IN PARIS.

The Englishman Abroad--M. Lemoinne’s Analysis--The Englishwoman--Sunday
in London and in Paris--Americans in Paris--The American Girl.....9

MORE PARISIAN TYPES.

The Spy--Under Sartines and Berryer--Fouché--Delavau--The Present
System--The Écuyère--The Circus in Paris.....17

CHAPTER IV.

THE DOMESTIC.

The French Servant, as described by Léon Gozlan and by Mercier--The Cook
and the Cordon Bleu--The Valet.....20

CHAPTER V.

PARISIAN CHARACTERISTICS.

Parisian Characteristics--Gaiety, Flippancy Wit--A String of Favourite
Anecdotes.....24

CHAPTER VI.

THE STREETS.

The Arrangement of the Streets--System of Numbering the Houses--Street
Nomenclature--Street Lamps--The Various Kinds of Vehicles in Use.....28

CHAPTER VII.

THE SEINE AND ITS BRIDGES.--THE MORGUE. The Various Bridges over the
Seine--Their Histories--The Morgue--Some Statistics.....33

CHAPTER VIII.

THE REFORMATION IN PARIS.

D’Étaples, the Pioneer of the Reformation--Nicolas Cop and
Calvin--Progress of the Reformation--Persecutions--Catharine de
Médicis--St. Bartholomew’s--The Edict of Nantes.....36

CHAPTER IX.

THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS AND THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE.

The French Educational System--Lycées and Collèges--The University of
Paris--The College of France.....44

CHAPTER X.

THE SORBONNE.

Robert de Sorbonne--The Sorbonne, its Origin and History--Richelieu--The
Revolution--The New Sorbonne--Mercier’s Views.....49

CHAPTER XI.

THE INSTITUTE.

The Institute--Its Unique Character--The Objects of its Projectors--Its
Constitution.....53

CHAPTER XII.

THE ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE.

The Académie Française--Its Foundation by Richelieu--Its
Constitution--The “Forty-first Chair”.....55

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PANTHÉON.

The Church of Clovis--The Church of Sainte-Geneviève--France in the
Thirteenth Century--The Building of the New Church under Louis
XV.--Mirabeau and the Constituent Assembly--The Church of
Sainte-Geneviève becomes the Panthéon......59

CHAPTER XIV.

THE POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL.

The “Central School of Public Works”--Bonaparte and the Polytechnic--The
College of Navarre--Formal Inauguration in 1805--1816--1830.....67

CHAPTER XV.

THE HÔTEL CLUNY.

The Rue des Carmes--Comte de Mun and the Catholic Workmen’s Club--The
Place Maubert--The Palais des Thermes--The Hôtel Cluny--Its History--Its
Art Treasures.....71

CHAPTER XVI.

THE MUSÉE D’ARTILLERIE.

The Museum of Artillery--Its Origin and History--The Growth of its
Collection of Armour and Weapons of all Kinds.....83

CHAPTER XVII.

THE VAL DE GRÂCE--RELICS OF THE GREAT.

The Deaf and Dumb Institution--The Val de Grâce--Hearts as Relics--Royal
Funerals--The Church of Saint-Denis.....89

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE CATACOMBS: THE OBSERVATORY.

Origin of the Catacombs--The Quarries of Mont Souris--The
Observatory--Marshal Ney--The School of Medicine.....99

CHAPTER XIX.

THE ODÉON: THE LUXEMBURG PALACE.

The Odéon--Its History--Erection of the Present Building in 1799--Marie
de Médicis and the Luxemburg Palace--The Judicial Annals of the
Luxemburg--Trials of Fieschi and Louvel--Trial of Louis Napoleon--Trial
of the Duc de Praslin.....109

CHAPTER XX.

THE PRISONS OF PARIS.

La Santé--La Roquette--The Conciergerie--The
Mazas--Sainte-Pélagie--Saint-Lazare--Prison Regulations.....131

CHAPTER XXI.

THE PARIS ZOO.

The Jardin des Plantes--Its Origin and History--Under Buffon--The Museum
of Natural History--The Tobacco Factory.....147

CHAPTER XXII.

SOME HISTORICAL BUILDINGS.

Abailard and Héloise--Fulbert’s House in the Rue des Chantres--The
Philip Augustus Towers--The Hôtel Barbette--The Hôtel de Sens.....156

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE MONT-DE-PIÉTÉ.

“Uncle” and “Aunt”--Organisation of the Mont-de-Piété--Its Various
Branches--Its Warehouses and Sale-rooms.....160

CHAPTER XXIV.

PARIS MARKETS.

The Halles-Centrales--The Cattle Markets--Agriculture in France--The
French Peasant.....166

CHAPTER XXV.

SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRÉS.

Its Origin and History--Its Library--Its Organ--Saint-Sulpice.....170

CHAPTER XXVI.

PRINTING IN PARIS--THE CENSORSHIP.

Rue Visconti--Historical Buildings--The National School of Roads and
Bridges--The Introduction of Printing into Paris--The First Printing
Establishments--The Censorship.....174

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE HÔTEL DES INVALIDES.

A Glance at its History--Louis XIV. and Mme. de Maintenon--The
Pensioners--Their Characteristics and Mode of Life.....185

CHAPTER XXVIII.

SOME MORE PARIS HOSPITALS.

The French Hospital System--The Laënnec Hospital--The Houses of
Assistance--The Quinze-Vingts--Deaf and Dumb Institutions--The Abbé de
l’Épée--La Charité.....193

CHAPTER XXIX.

LUNATIC ASYLUMS AND MIXED INSTITUTIONS.

The Treatment of Lunacy in the Past--La Salpêtrière--Bicêtre--The Story
of Latude--The Four Sergeants of La Rochelle--Pinel’s
Reforms--Charenton.....207

CHAPTER XXX.

THE RIVER BIÈVRE AND THE MANUFACTORY OF THE GOBELINS.

The Brothers Gobelin--Lebrun--The Gobelins under Louis XIV.--At the Time
of the Revolution--The Manufactory of Sèvres.....225

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE PALAIS BOURBON.

The Palais Bourbon--Its History--The National Convention--Philippe
Égalité.....231

CHAPTER XXXII.

SOME HISTORICAL RESIDENCES.

The Palace of the Legion of Honour--The Ministry of War--The Rue de
Grenelle--Talleyrand.....236

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE RUE TARANNE AND DIDEROT.

Diderot’s Early Life in Paris--His Love Affairs--Imprisonment in the
Château de Vincennes--Diderot and Catherine II. of Russia--His
Death.....242

CHAPTER XXXIV.

MONSEIGNEUR AFFRE AND THE INSURRECTION OF JUNE.

The Courtyard of the Dragon--The National Workshops--The Insurrection of
June--Monseigneur Affre Shot at the Barricade of the Faubourg St.
Antoine.....247

CHAPTER XXXV.

SOME OCCUPANTS OF MONTPARNASSE.

The Boulevard Montparnasse--The Cemetery--Father Loriquet--Hégésippe
Moreau--Sainte-Beuve.....250

CHAPTER XXXVI.

SPORTS AND DIVERSIONS.

Le “Sport”--Longchamps--Versailles Races--Fontainebleau--The
Seine--Swimming Baths--The Art of Book-collecting.....254

CHAPTER XXXVII.

FENCING SCHOOLS.

Fencing in France--A National Art--Some Extracts from the Writings of M.
Legouvé, One of its Chief Exponents--The Old Style of Fencing and the
New.....257

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

PETTY TRADES.

Petty Trades--Their Origins--The Day-Banker--The Guardian Angel--The
Old-Clothesman--The Claque--Its First Beginning and Development.....259

CHAPTER XXXIX.

OBSOLETE PARIS SHOPS.

The Old Wooden Stalls of Forty Years Ago--The “Lucky Fork”--The Cobbler’
Shops--The Old Cafés.....265

CHAPTER XL.

THE PARIS PRESS.

French Governments and the Press--The Press under Napoleon--Some Account
of the Leading Paris Papers--The _Figaro_.....268

CHAPTER XLI.

FROM THE QUAI VOLTAIRE TO THE PANTHÉON.

The Quai Voltaire--Its Changes of Name--Voltaire--His Life in Paris
and Elsewhere--His Remains laid in the
Panthéon--Mirabeau--Rousseau--Vincennes.....273

CHAPTER XLII.

THE PALAIS MAZARIN AND THE RUE MAZARINE.

The Institute or Palais Mazarin--The Rue Mazarine--L’Illustre
Théâtre--Molière--The Theatre Français--The Odéon--Heine--The Faubourg
Saint-Germain--Historical Associations.....288

CHAPTER XLIII.

THE PARIS RIVER AND PARIS COMMERCE.

The Society of the Water-Merchants of Paris--The Navigation of the
Seine--The Paris Slaughter-Houses--Records of Famine in France--The Lot
of the French Peasant in the Last Century--The Paris Food Supply.....307

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE BARRIERS--PARISIAN CRIME.

The Approaches to Paris--The French Railway System--The St. Germain
Railway--The Erection of the Barriers--Some of the most famous
Barriers--Parisian Crime--Its Special Characteristics.....317

CHAPTER XLV.

PARISIAN MENDICANCY--THE PARIS POOR.

Parisian Mendicancy in the Sixteenth Century--The General
Hospital--Louis XV. and the Beggars--The Revolution--Mendicancy as a
Regular Profession--The Organ-grinders and the Trade in Italian
Children--The French Treatment of the Poor--Asylums, Almshouses, and
Retreats--The _Droit des Pauvres_--The Cost of the Poor.....324

CHAPTER XLVI.

VERSAILLES.

Derivation of the Name--Saint-Simon’s Description--Louis XIV.--The Grand
Fête of July, 1668--Peter the Great and the Regent--Louis XV.--Marie
Antoinette and the “Affair of the Necklace”--The Events of October,
1789.....338

CHAPTER XLVII.

VERSAILLES AND THE SIEGE OF PARIS.

The Advance on Paris--Preparations for the Siege--General Trochu--The
Francs-Tireurs--The Siege.....348

CHAPTER XLVIII.

VERSAILLES AND THE COMMUNE.

The Communists or Communards--The “Internationale”--Bismarck and the
National Guard--The Municipal Elections--The Insurrection--Thiers--Paris
during the Commune--Concluding Remarks.....355

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

                                                                    PAGE

On the Champs Élysées                                      _Frontispiece_

Outside a Railway Station in Paris                                     1

Waiting for a Fare                                                     3

Omnibus Coachman                                                       4

Private Coachman                                                       4

Hackney Coachman                                                       5

Hearse Coachman                                                        5

An Invitation to a “Petit Verre”                                       6

Street Scene                                                           8

In the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne at Night                             9

In the Flower Market                                                  13

After the Theatre                                                     16

At the Salon                                                          17

A Fair                                                                21

A Café Chantant                                                       24

Parisian Types--In the Barracks                                       25

Parisian Types--In Search of Cigar-ends                               29

A Paris Omnibus                                                       31

Street Scene                                                          32

Eastern End of Île de la Cité                                _facing_ 33

Austerlitz Bridge                                                     35

On the Saint-Martin Canal                                             36

The Solferino Bridge, from the Quai d’Orsay                           37

The National Bridge                                                   40

The Right Arm of the Seine from Boulevard
Henri IV                                                              41

The College of France                                                 44

The Lycée Voltaire                                                    45

The Lycée Charlemagne                                                 47

The Lycée Condorcet                                                   48

The Court of the Sorbonne                                             49

Façade of the New Sorbonne                                            51

The Church of the Sorbonne                                            52

The Dome of the Panthéon, Spire of St. Étienne du
Mont, and Tour de Clovis                                              57

The Panthéon, from the Luxemburg Gardens                              60

Place du Panthéon                                                     61

Well in the Courtyard, Cluny Museum                          _facing_ 65

Interior of the Panthéon                                              65

Library of Sainte-Geneviève                                           68

St. Stephen-of-the-Mount                                              69

Interior of Church of St. Stephen-of-the-Mount                        70

The Chapel of the Ancient College of the Lombards                     72

Place Maubert, with the Statue of Étienne Dolet                       73

Patrons of the Chateau Rouge                                          75

Rue de Bièvre                                                         75

Ruins of the Palais des Thermes                                       76

Entrance to the Cluny Museum, Rue du Sammerard                        77

Staircase, Cluny Museum                                               80

Dormer Windows at the Cluny Museum                                    81

Group of Shafted Weapons in the Artillery Museum                      84

Decorated Spanish Cannon in the Artillery Museum                      85

Decorated Muskets in the Artillery Museum                             85

The Deaf and Dumb Institution                                         89

Elm Tree in the Court of Honour at the Deaf and
Dumb Institution                                                      92

Statue of the Abbé de l’Épée at the Deaf and Dumb
Institution                                                           93

The Val de Grâce from the Rue de la Santé                             96

View from the Pont de la Concorde                            _facing_ 97

Entrance to the Observatory                                          100

The Gardens of the Observatory, Boulevard Arago                      101

Place de l’Observatoire                                              104

School of Drawing, Rue l’École de Médecine                           105

Statue of Marshal Ney                                                105

School of Medicine                                                   107

New Wing of the School of Medicine                                   107

Hôtel du Cheval Blanc                                                108

Rue de l’Odéon                                                       109

Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie                                            109

Odéon Theatre                                                        111

The Luxemburg Palace: the Garden Façade                              112

The Luxemburg Palace from the Terrace                                112

The Senate Chamber                                                   113

Entrance Court, Luxemburg Palace                                     115

Grand Avenue, Luxemburg Gardens                                      115

Sculpture Gallery, Luxemburg Palace                                  116

Salle des Fêtes, Luxemburg Palace                                    117

The Central Fountain, Luxemburg Gardens                              119

Façade of the Ancient Chapel of the Daughters of
Calvary, Luxemburg                                                   120

Listening to the Band in the Luxemburg Gardens                       121

The Marie de Médicis Grotto and Fountain                             124

Back of the Marie de Médicis Fountain                                125

Fremiel-Carpeaux Fountain, Luxemburg Gardens                         126

The Luxemburg Museum                                                 128

The Hôtel de Sens                                           _facing_ 129

The Mineralogical Museum                                             129

Prison of La Santé                                                   132

Inside the Walls of La Santé                                         132

The Common Quarter, La Santé--“The Parlour”                          133

Interior of La Santé                                                 135

Gaolers’ Mess-room, La Santé                                         136

Entrance to La Grande Roquette                                       137

Warders’ Room and adjoining Courtyard, La
Grande Roquette                                                      140

Chapel, La Grande Roquette                                           141

The Chapel-school, La Petite Roquette                                143

The Political Quarter, Sainte-Pélagie                                144

The Courtyard, Saint-Lazare                                          145

Buffon                                                               148

The Carnivora Section, Jardin des Plantes                            149

Entrance to Hothouses, Jardin des Plantes                            149

Marabout Storks in the Jardin des Plantes                            151

The Polar Bear in the Jardin des Plantes                             151

The Bear-pit, Jardin des Plantes                                     152

Dromedary in the Jardin des Plantes                                  153

Llama in the Jardin des Plantes                                      155

Rue des Chantres, looking towards Notre-Dame                         156

Site of the House of Abailard and Héloise, Rue des
Chantres                                                             157

Rue des Chantres, looking towards the Quai                           158

Portion of the Façade, Musée Carnavalet                              159

The Opera House                                             _facing_ 161

Entrance to the Mont-de-Piété, Chaussée d’Antin                      161

The Jewellery Stores, Rue des Blancs Manteaux                        163

In the Rue de Capron Branch of the Mont-de-Piété                     164

The Sale-room of the Mont-de-Piété, Rue des Blancs
Manteaux                                                             165

Rue de Tournon, with the Façade of the Senate
House                                                                168

The Saint-Germain Market                                             169

The Tower of Saint-Germain-des-Prés                                  171

Saint-Germain-des-Prés                                               172

The Side Entrance to Saint-Germain-des-Prés                          173

The Rue de l’Abbaye                                                  174

Saint-Sulpice and Apsis of Saint-Sulpice                             176

Fountain, Place Saint-Sulpice                                        177

The Garden, School of Fine Arts                                      180

The Arc de Gaillon, School of Fine Arts                              181

Courtyard, School of Fine Arts                                       181

A Façade on the Quai Malaquais                                       182

Street Scene                                                         184

Hôtel des Invalides                                                  185

Dome of the Hôtel des Invalides                                      186

Dormer Window on the Façade, Hôtel des Invalides                     187

The Court of Honour, Hôtel des Invalides                             187

Invalides                                                            188

Tomb of Napoleon                                                     189

Entrance to the Tomb of Napoleon                                     191

Street Scene                                                         192

Latude recognises D’Aligre                                  _facing_ 193

The Laennec Hospital, Rue de Sèvres                                  193

The Children’s Hospital, Rue de Sèvres                               195

The Blind School: in the Work-room                                   196

Attendants’ Room in a Paris Hospital                                 197

La Charité                                                           198

Hospital on the Boulevard du Pont Royal                              199

Entrance to the St. Louis Hospital                                   200

Courtyard of the St. Louis Hospital                                  200

A Ward in the St. Louis Hospital                                     201

The Repairing Room, St. Louis Hospital                               201

The Tenon Hospital                                                   203

Nurse Pupils at the Maternity Hospital                               204

The Maternity Hospital                                               205

Font at the Maternity Hospital                                       205

Hôspital de la Pitié                                                 206

Façade of the Main Buildings, Salpêtrière                            208

The Mazarin Ward, Salpêtrière                                        209

Place de Conseil, Salpêtrière                                        212

The Park, Salpêtrière                                                213

The Village, Salpêtrière                                             216

The Lunatics’ Quarter, Salpêtrière                                   217

The Chapel, Salpêtrière                                              220

The Bicêtre, 1710 (_After Gueroult_)                                 221

Dinner-Time at Bicêtre                                               224

Entrance to Bicêtre                                                  224

The Bièvre                                                  _facing_ 225

Avenue des Gobelins                                                  226

The Bièvre in the Gardens of the Gobelins                            227

The Old Buildings of the Gobelins                                    228

In the Gardens of the Gobelins                                       228

Interior of the Gobelins                                             229

A Street in the Neighbourhood of the Gobelins                        230

Façade of the Chamber of Deputies on Place du
Palais Bourbon                                                       232

Chamber of Deputies from the Quai d’Orsay                            233

Ruins of the Palace of the Council of State, Quai
d’Orsay                                                              237

Palace of the Legion of Honour                                       238

The Ministry of War                                                  240

Fountain in the Rue de Grenelle                                      241

Grimm and Diderot                                                    244

Statue of Diderot, Boulevard St.-Germain, facing
the Rue St.-Benoit                                                   245

Entrance to the Courtyard of the Dragon                              248

Courtyard of the Dragon                                              249

The Montparnasse Station                                             253

Second-hand Bookstalls                                               256

The Bureau de Bienfaisance Asylum at Vincennes:
(1) The Façade. (2) The Bowling Green                       _facing_ 257

Old-Clothes Dealer                                                   260

Le Débarcadère des Bateaux-Omnibus: Vendors of
Refreshments                                                         261

Snow Scene                                                           267

Bookstalls on the Quai Voltaire                                      268

Édmond About                                                         272

The late Albert Wolff, of the _Figaro_                               273

Statue of Voltaire,                                                  277

The Pont du Carrousel and the Louvre, from the
Quai Malaquais                                                       280

The Seine, between the City and the Quai des
Augustines                                                           281

Jean Jacques Rousseau                                                284

Madame D’Épinay                                                      285

A Night Refuge in the Vaugirard Quarter                     _facing_ 289

Cardinal Mazarin                                                     289

Entrance to the Hôtel de Chateaubriand, in the
Faubourg St. Germain                                                 293

The Bridge, Place, and Boulevard St. Michel                          296

The St. Michel Fountain                                              297

The Castle of Chambord                                               301

Porte aux Pommes: Fruit-boats on the Seine                           304

Porte aux Pommes                                                     305

The Villette _Abbatoirs_                                             309

A Seine Steamboat                                                    312

The Seine at Grenelle                                                313

The Chapelle Saint Denis Barrier                                     317

The _Octroi_ Barriers of Petit-Château and Grand-Bercy               320

Versailles: the Façade and the Great Fountain               _facing_ 321

Tram at the Barrier                                                  321

Street Scene                                                         324

Asylum for Women, Rue Fessart: The Refectory                         329

A “Bureau de Bienfaisance”                                           332

A Night Refuge                                                       333

Pensioners of “L’Assistance Publique”                           335, 336

Versailles (_from an old print_)                                     341

The Colonnade of Versailles                                          344

The Gallery of Battles, Versailles                                   345

General Trochu                                                       349

Map of the Fortifications at the Siege of Paris                      352

The Prussians Entering Paris                                _facing_ 353

Prince Bismarck                                                      355

M. Thiers                                                            357

Marshal MacMahon                                                     360

[Illustration: OUTSIDE A RAILWAY STATION IN PARIS.]

PARIS, OLD AND NEW.

CHAPTER I.

STREET CHARACTERS.

The Cocher--The Bus-driver--The Private Coachman--The Hackney
Coachman--The Public Writer--The Flower-girl--The Oyster-woman.

A Parisian who is not rich enough to keep a distinguished chef of his
own will occasionally order a dainty dinner to be forwarded to him from
some hotel or restaurant; and in these cases the repast, as soon as it
is ready, is sometimes put into a hackney cab and driven to the house of
the consignee by the cocher, who is not unaccustomed to find this “fare”
more remunerative than the fare he habitually conveys.

A glance at the cocher, as another of the Parisian types of character,
may here be not inopportune. As a matter of fact, however, the cocher is
not one type but several. The name applies to the driver of the omnibus,
of the fiacre, and of the private carriage. As to the omnibus driver, he
is more amiable, more easy-going, less sarcastic than his counterpart in
London. Nobody would ever hear an omnibus driver in Paris say, as one
has been heard to say in London, when a lady passenger requested to be
put down at 339½ ---- Street, “Certainly, madam, and would you like me
to drive upstairs?” Nor is the Paris cabman so extortionate as his
London brother; for the fare-regulations, by which there is one fixed
charge for the conveyance of a passenger any distance within a certain
radius, precludes the inevitable dispute which awaits the lady or
gentleman who in our metropolis dares to take a four-wheeler or a
hansom.

Already in the sixteenth century hackney carriages were driven in the
streets of Paris; and any differences arising between the cocher and his
passenger were at this period referred to the lieutenant of the police.
The private coachmen, attached to the service of the nobility, found
their position a somewhat perilous one in an age when quarrels were so
frequent on the question of social precedence. If two aristocratic
carriages met in some narrow street, barring each other’s way, the
footmen would get down and fight for a passage. Serious wounds were
sometimes inflicted, and even the master would now and then step out of
his vehicle and, with drawn sword, join in the affray. The coachman,
meanwhile, prouder in livery than his master in braided coat, remained
motionless on his box in spite of the blows which were being dealt
around. It is related that when on one occasion a party of highwaymen
attacked the carriage of Benserade, poet, wit, and dramatic author, his
coachman sat calmly at his post, and amused himself with whistling
whilst his master was being stripped of everything. From time to time he
turned towards the robbers and said, “Gentlemen, shall you soon have
finished, and can I continue my journey?”

The private coachman varied in those days, as he has always done,
according to the position of the master or mistress whom he served; and
Mercier, writing at a later period, indicates a sufficient variety of
cochers of this class. “You can clearly distinguish the coachman of a
courtesan,” he says, “from that of a president; the coachman of a duke
from that of a financier; but, at the exit from the theatre, would you
like to know where such and such a vehicle is going? Listen to the order
which the master gives to the lackey, or rather which the latter
transmits to the coachman. In the Marais they say ‘Au logis’; in the
Isle of St Louis ‘À la maison’; in the Faubourg Saint-Germain ‘À
l’hôtel’; and in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré ‘Allez!’ With the grandeur of
this last word no one can fail to be impressed. At the theatre door
stands a thundering personage with a voice like Stentor, who cries: ‘The
carriage of Monsieur le Marquis!’ ‘The carriage of Madame la Comtesse!’
‘The carriage of M. le Président!’ His terrible voice resounds to the
very interior of the taverns where the lackeys are drinking, and of the
billiard rooms where the coachmen are quarrelling and disputing. This
voice quite drowns the confused sounds of men and horses. Lackeys and
coachmen at this re-echoing signal abandon their pint-pots and their
cues, and rush out to resume the reins and open the doors.”

The profession of the hackney coachman has always been and still is
subjected to a special legislation. In Paris anyone exercising it must
be at least eighteen years of age; carry upon him the official documents
in virtue of which he wields his whip; present to his fare the card
which indicates the number and tariff of the vehicle, and which the
passenger must retain in view of possible disputes; show politeness to
the public; receive his fare in advance when he is driving to theatres,
halls, or fêtes where there is likely to be a crush of vehicles; never
carry more than his legal number of passengers, and not smoke on duty.
When travelling he must take the right side of the road, avoid
intercepting funeral processions and bodies of troops, go at walking
pace through the markets and in certain other specified places; and,
from nightfall, light up his vehicle with a couple of lamps. The lamps
used for the cabs of the Imperial Company are blue, yellow, red, or
green. These different colours are intended to induce passengers leaving
the theatre at night to take, by preference, those vehicles which belong
to the quarter in which they live; blue indicating the regions of
Popincourt and Belleville; yellow those of Poissonière-Montmartre; red
those of the Champs Élysées, Passy, and Batignolles; and green those of
the Invalides and the Observatory. Besides the penalties pronounced by
the penal code for causing death or personal injury through careless
driving, minor infractions of the regulations are punished, by the
prefect of police, with suspension of licence or, in certain cases,
final withdrawal. The proprietors and masters are responsible for any
offences committed by the coachmen, and for any loss or injury to
luggage or other goods confided to their vehicles for transport.

The law which prescribes to Paris cabmen one uniform fare for journeys
of no matter what length within a certain radius would at first appear
to be very much to the advantage of the public, who are thus protected
from extortion. It has a great drawback, all the same. In London a
cabman is always delighted to see a gentleman step into his vehicle,
even though the welcome he evinces be rather that of the spider to the
fly. He unhesitatingly drives him to his destination, and the gentleman,
even though he is fleeced at the end of the journey, at least gets where
he wished to go. But the Paris cabman is fastidious. If the destination
mentioned by the intending passenger does not exactly suit him, he is
prone to shake his head, ply his whip, and drive away with an empty
vehicle.

The alacrity and enthusiasm of the London cabman are due to the fact
that when he has his passenger safely inside the hansom or “growler” his
soul is animated by the hope of obtaining a fare indefinitely in excess
of the legal tariff. The uniformity of fares in Paris deprives the
cabman of any enthusiastic interest in his work, as it likewise strips
him of some of the curious and amusing characteristics which he might
otherwise exhibit.

In our own metropolis a famous millionaire, having ridden one day in a
cab for the distance of a mile and a half, tendered the driver a
shilling in payment of his fare. The driver stared at the coin in the
palm of his hand and then proceeded to remonstrate. “Both your sons,
sir,” he said, “whenever they ride in my hansom, pay me at least
half-a-crown.” “I dare say they do,” replied the millionaire, “for they
have an old fool of a father to back them up.” In Paris, where this
millionaire had a brother as rich as himself, such an incident would
have been impossible.

[Illustration: WAITING FOR A FARE.]

Another figure of the Paris streets is, or rather until some twenty-five
years ago was, the Public Writer; not the contributor to an important
daily paper, but an unhappy scribe whose task it was to put into
epistolary form such matter as was entrusted to him for the purpose by
illiterate cabmen, workmen, and servant girls. The little booths with
desks in front where he exercised his strange profession have
disappeared as Paris has been demolished and rebuilt. The spread of
education among the lower classes was really his death-blow.

The public writer was usually an old man, sometimes one of erudition,
who had been reduced by severe reverses or persistent misery to a very
low position. He wrote a beautiful hand, and could on occasion compose a
poem. He could execute a piece of penmanship in so many different
handwritings (seventeen or eighteen), and his flourishes and
ornamentations were so magnificent, that he would never have prostituted
his pen to the service of shopgirls and domestics had not starvation
stared him in the face. Moreover, the cultivation of an acquaintanceship
with the Muses solaced him, and caused him to forget the day of his
greatness when, holding the diploma of a “master-writer,” he inscribed
the Ten Commandments or executed a dedication to the king on a bit of
vellum smaller than a crown piece. He could dash off verses at a
moment’s notice, and had always in reserve a varied assortment of
festive songs, wedding-lines, epitaphs, and simple and double acrostics,
to serve whatever occasion might arise.

[Illustration: OMNIBUS COACHMAN.]

Above the Public Writer’s door, which he threw open every morning to his
clients, this legend was inscribed:--“The Tomb of Secrets.” The
passer-by thus learned that there--in the words of a French
chronicler--“behind those four coarsely-whitened windows of the entrance
door, was an ear and a hand which held the key of human infirmities;
that there, smiling and serviceable, Discretion resided in flesh and
blood. Curious to see everything, you approached; a few specimens of
petitions to the Chief of the State, drawn up on official paper and
sealed with wafers, gave you a foretaste of the master’s dexterity.
Moreover you could read, in a position well exposed to view, some piece
of poetic inscription, deficient in neither rhyme nor even reason, and
cleverly calculated to allure you forthwith. The running hand, the round
hand, the English hand, and the Gothic hand alternated freely in the
ingenious composition, not to mention the flourishings with which the
lines ended, the page encased in ornamented spirals, the capitals
complicated with arabesques, and so forth. One day we read one of the
writings peculiar to this profession, and copied it with a haste which
we do not regret to-day when the booth where we saw it has been removed.
This booth, a mere plank box, three feet square, whence issued during
forty years an incalculable number of letters, petitions, and other
documents, was situated in the quarter of Saint-Victor, at the foot of
the Rue des Fossés, Saint-Bernard. Its occupant was a man named Étienne
Larroque, an old bailiff whom misfortune had reduced to this poor trade.
Nearly eighty years of age, this Nestor of public writers was known to
everybody.”

[Illustration: PRIVATE COACHMAN.]

To the pedestrian his signboard proclaimed the particulars of his
profession in a piece of poetry which might at all events have been
much worse, and of which the metre was marred only by one fault--a
certain line with a foot too much. Dressed in a frock coat maltreated by
years, the writer, continues the before-mentioned chronicler, sat in his
office, with his spectacles on his nose, and all his pens cut before
him. He placed himself eagerly at the service of anyone who crossed the
threshold. Sometimes the strangest revelations were confided to him.
Installed in his cane arm-chair, furnished with a cushion which he had
sat upon till it was crushed to a pancake, he lent a grave ear to the
pretty little rosy mouths that came to tell him everything, as though he
were a confessor or a physician, and took up his pen to write for them
their letters of love or complaint. More than one unhappy girl came to
him to sigh and weep and to accuse the monster who had sworn to wed her;
more than one fireman came to confess to him the flame which was burning
in his breast; more than one soldier to request him to pen a challenge.

[Illustration: HACKNEY COACHMAN.]

As the depository of secrets innumerable, the Public Writer was a most
important personage; or would have been had he been able to take full
literary advantage of the confidences entrusted to him. Richardson’s
knowledge of the female heart is said to have been due to the good faith
with which he inspired a number of young ladies, who thereupon gave him,
unconsciously, material for such characters as Pamela and Clarissa
Harlowe. They consulted him now and then about their love letters. But
the Public Writer had love letters, letters of reproach, letters of
explanation, letters of farewell, to write every day, and by the dozen.
It is not recorded, however, that any Public Writer was sufficiently
inspired, or sufficiently interested in his habitual work to turn the
dramatic materials which must often have come beneath him into novels or
plays.

[Illustration: HEARSE COACHMAN.]

[Illustration: AN INVITATION TO A “PETIT VERRE.”]

The personage known as the Public Writer was at least a more useful
institution than the book entitled “The Complete Letter-Writer,” the
function of which is to supply correspondence in regard to every
possible incident in life. The Public Writer was, if up to his work,
capable of suiting his language to peculiar cases, whereas the Complete
Letter-Writer was an oracle whose utterances came forth hard and fast,
in such a way that the ignorant devotees could not change them. Thus
the illiterate persons who could not read at all had a clear advantage
over those whose education enabled them to read the Complete
Letter-Writer, but not to apply it. In an excellent farce by M. Varin,
one of the best comic dramatists of the French stage, an amusing
_equivoque_--or _quiproquo_ as the French say--is caused by an ignorant
young man in some house of business addressing a love letter to the
dark-haired daughter of his employer, which expresses admiration for
locks of gold such as belong in profusion, not to the girl, but to her
buxom mother. When the husband’s jealousy is excited and a variety of
comic incidents have resulted therefrom, it appears that the unlettered
and moreover foolish young clerk has copied his epistle out of a
letter-book, and, thinking apparently that one love letter would do as
well as another, has addressed to a girl with dark hair a declaration
intended by the author of the Complete Letter-Writer for a woman who is
beautifully blonde. No such mistake as this could have occurred had the
amorous young clerk told his case to a Public Writer, and ordered an
appropriate letter for the occasion.

Another interesting type of street character in Paris is the
_bouquetière_ or flower-girl. She is more enterprising and engaging than
her counterpart in London. She will approach a gentleman who happens to
be walking past and stick a flower in his button-hole, leaving it to his
own sense of chivalry whether he pays her anything or not. Nor does the
device infrequently produce a piece of silver. There is generally one
flower-girl in Paris who poses as a celebrity--either on account of her
beauty or of other qualities of a more indefinable character.
Fashionable Parisians resort to her stall and pay fantastic prices for
whatever bloom she pins to their breast. The flower-girl of the Jockey
Club, who used to attend the races and ply her trade in the enclosure of
the grand stand, expected a louis as her ordinary fee.

The oyster-woman, too, is a highly important personage. Paris consumes
three hundred million oysters a year, and the dispensing of these
bivalves keeps the lady in question sufficiently active whilst the
season lasts. At breakfast-time or dinner-time, with a white napkin
thrust in her girdle, a knife in her hand, and a smile on her lips, she
is to be seen stationed at the entrance to restaurants in anticipation
of the waiter rushing out and shouting: “One dozen,” “Two dozen,” or
“Ten dozen--open!” A police ordinance of September 25th, 1771, forbade
oyster-women to exercise their trade between the last day of April and
the 10th of September, under penalty of a fine of 200 francs and the
confiscation of their stock. This ordinance was destined to fall into
disuse; but inasmuch as the prohibited months are those in which oysters
are at their worst, the _écaillères_ of Paris do in fact to-day suspend
their trade during May, June, July, and August--months which they devote
to the sale of sugared barley-water and other cooling beverages.

In Paris a sempstress is supposed to be “_gentille_,” a _lingère_, or
getter-up of linen, “_aimable_,” a flower-girl “pretty.” The
oyster-woman, although not characterised by any one particular quality,
is credited with a combination of qualities in a more or less modified
degree. Without being in her first youth, she is young; without being in
the bloom of beauty, she does not lack personal charm; and frequently
she invests even the opening of oysters with a grace which may well
excite admiration. _La belle écaillère_ is indeed the name traditionally
applied to her. With the origin of this name a tragic story is
associated.

There was once a charmingly pretty oyster-girl named Louise Leroux,
known as _La belle écaillère_. She had a lover named Montreuil, a
fireman, who, in a moment of frantic jealousy, plunged his sword into
her breast. This horrible crime at once rendered “the beautiful
oyster-girl” famous, not only in Paris, but throughout Europe; and in
due time the legend of her life and love took dramatic form, and found
its way to the stage. The interest excited in her unhappy end was all
the greater inasmuch as her murderer had eluded justice by flying to
England, where, in London, he set up as a fencing master. The Gaieté
Theatre achieved, in 1837, one of its greatest successes by putting on
the boards, under the title of _La Belle Écaillère_, the tragic history
of Louise Leroux.

Since then the name has been familiarly applied without discrimination
to the female oyster-sellers of Paris, many of whom have well deserved
it. But while bearing the name, they have abandoned the traditional
fireman, as rather too dangerous a commodity. In lieu of firemen they
have captivated notaries, financiers, and others in superior stations of
life; whilst one is known to have turned the head of a state minister,
who, even if he did not marry her, confessed the passion with which she
inspired him by devouring thirty-two dozen of her oysters every morning
before breakfast. The flame within him had first been excited by the
siren’s ready wit. As he was entering a restaurant one day, a friend who
accompanied him remarked: “To-day, my dear sir, more than ever, France
dances on a volcano.” “What nonsense!” cried the _écaillère_; “she
dances on a heap of oysters!” Next day the exclamation was reported in a
Paris journal, which easily turned it to political account.

There was another oyster-girl who solved a question of lexicographic
definition which had hopelessly baffled the Academicians. A new edition
of the _Dictionnaire de l’Académie_ was being prepared, and it became
necessary to establish the distinction of meaning between the two
expressions _de suite_ and _tout de suite_. The forty Academicians were
all at variance about it, and were about to tear their hair, when one of
them, Népomucène Lemercier, exclaimed: “Let us go and dine at
Ramponneau’s. That’s better than disputing. We can discuss the matter
during dessert.” “Agreed,” replied another member--Nodier. The
Academicians forthwith set out, and when they had arrived at their
destination one of them, Parseval-Grandmaison, who ordered the dinner,
said to the _écaillère_: “Open forty dozen oysters for us _de suite_,
and serve them _tout de suite_.” “But, sir,” replied the oyster-woman,
“if I open them _de suite_, I cannot serve them _tout de suite_.” The
Academicians looked at each other in astonishment. The problem had been
solved. They had now discovered that of the two expressions _tout de
suite_ indicated the greater celerity.

[Illustration: Street Scene]

[Illustration: IN THE AVENUE DU BOIS DE BOULOGNE, AT NIGHT.]

CHAPTER II.

THE ENGLISH AND AMERICANS IN PARIS.

The Englishman Abroad--M. Lemoinne’s Analysis--The Englishwoman--Sunday
in London and in Paris--Americans in Par--The American Girl.

Hitherto the types of character which we have noticed have been native.
Let us vary them by a glance at the typical foreigner or rather
foreigners residing or sojourning in Paris.

To begin with the Englishman. In Paris, although there are a great
number of Englishmen, it can hardly be said that an English Society
exists. Samuel Johnson once complained that Englishmen did not
fraternise with one another; that if two visitors called upon a lady
about the same time and were shown into her drawing-room, they would,
until the lady made her appearance--say for five minutes--simply glare
at one other in silence, whereas a couple of foreigners would, although
they had never met before, have entered into a conversation.

Without, perhaps, being aware of Johnson’s stricture on the social
frigidity of his own countrymen, an excellent French writer, John
Lemoinne, has noticed the same insular peculiarity in English visitors
to Paris. “The English,” he says, “do not seek one another’s
acquaintance; they do not come into other lands to find themselves. If
they easily form acquaintanceship with foreigners, they are more
fastidious in approaching each other. An Englishman will make friends
with a Frenchman without the ceremony of presentation, I mean of
introduction, but never with another Englishman. A couple of Englishmen
stare at each other very hard before saying, ‘How do you do?’”

_Punch_ many years ago noticed this national characteristic in a picture
which represented two English visitors to Paris breakfasting at the same
table in the Hôtel Meurice, and, although the only guests in the room,
solemnly ignoring each other’s existence.

But M. Lemoinne goes further than _Punch_. “If the English leave their
native land,” he says, “it is not to find their own compatriots; it is
to see new men and new things. Even when you understand their language,
they prefer to talk to you in their bad French. The thing is
intelligible enough: they wish to learn, and have no desire to teach.
You are regarded simply as a book and a grammar. The foreigner must be
turned to some account.”

So far excellent. But let us return to Samuel Johnson. When he visited
Paris did he air his “bad French”? No, he absolutely refused to speak a
word of anything but English. This by no means confirms M. Lemoinne’s
proposition. Yet in fairness, let it be said, Johnson’s chief objection
to talking French in Paris was a fear lest he should “put his foot in
it,” and, lexicographer as he was, excite by some grammatical blunder
the ridicule of irreverent Parisians.

Let us see, however, to what lengths M. Lemoinne is prepared to go. “If
there was ever a people who have the sentiment of nationality, it is,”
he says, “the English. They are impregnated, petrified with it; the
thing is fatiguing and offensive. But in order to affirm and manifest
this sentiment the English have no need to group themselves, to form
themselves into a society. An Englishman is to himself England alone; he
carries his nation in him, with him, on him; he does not require to be
several. Everywhere he is at home: the atmosphere is his kingdom and the
ambient air his property. Religion enters largely into this temperament.
The Englishman carries not only his nation, but his religion with him;
he scours the whole earth with his Bible for companion; the Frenchman,
habitually catholic, requires a bell and a priest--he does not know how
to converse directly with Heaven. From a social point of view, moreover,
the English find France freer, more liberal, more open than their own
country. English society, at home, is regulated like music-paper; it has
a severe hierarchy, in which the most idiotic little lord stands before
a man of genius without a title. Geographically, it is a very narrow
space which separates England from France; but this space is a gulf. The
two countries are in constant relationship; but they never arrive at any
resemblance to each other. We have not the political liberty of the
English, and they have not our social equality. An Englishman could not
live with laws like those which, in France, regulate the right of
speaking, the right of writing, the right of petitioning, the right of
assembling, the right of going and coming; but a Frenchman would be
stifled amidst those thousand conventional bonds which form English
society. The influence of convention in England is such that it equals
and even surpasses the tyranny of the political and administrative laws
of the Continent. That is why the Englishman, after a stay of some time,
and when the ice of his nature is a little melted, moves amongst
foreigners as freely as he moves at home. No possible comparison can be
made between the Frenchman in London and the Englishman in Paris; or at
all events the comparison can only be an antithesis. The Frenchman who
pays a visit to England will, so soon as presented, be welcomed with a
boundless hospitality, provided his visit is only a flying one; but if
he apparently wishes to take root, the soil refuses, and society shuts
itself up and retires as though a descent were being made upon its
territory. It must be confessed, moreover, that France is not usually
represented in England by the cream or flower of her population; and for
a simple reason, namely, that a Frenchman does not go to England for
pleasure or from choice, and that he has no idea but that of returning
as quickly as possible. But apart, even, from these particular
circumstances, the mere pressure of the English social atmosphere
suffices to asphyxiate a Frenchman. It is a world, an order of ideas, an
assemblage of laws and customs entirely different from all others.

“A Parisian may for years walk round English society as he would walk
round the wall of China, without being able to find either a door or a
window. He understands absolutely nothing about it.

“In France, on the contrary, Englishmen find a greater social liberty.
French society is an open society; French manners are cosmopolitan
manners. The most diverse peoples can in France find their place without
losing their national character. In our country everyone is at home, and
the Englishman gets on comfortably enough. In the Englishman, however,
it is necessary to distinguish between the citizen and the individual;
for he is both. When the national interests or passions are in question
he does not scruple to intrigue and conspire; when he is unconcerned
with the politics of the country where he happens to find himself, he
practises the greatest reserve and mixes in nothing. See the English at
Paris. They assist at all our revolutions as mere spectators; their sole
care is to get a good seat. They always come to their ambassador to
request a presentation at the Tuileries and tickets for the court ball.”

So far we have presented the observations of M. Lemoinne for what they
may be worth. That his skilful pen, however, penetrates sometimes into
the regions of truth is shown by the fact that his remarks not
infrequently recall those of foreign writers so famous as to be regarded
more or less as oracular. Heine, after visiting London, complained that
at an English dinner party the gentlemen, after the ladies had retired
from the dining-room, remained at table for an hour or two to saturate
themselves with port. Heine, it must be remembered, took a perverse
delight in satirising everything English. But that we, in England, do
leave the ladies to drink their after-dinner coffee in the desolation of
the drawing-room must be handsomely admitted. M. Lemoinne notices this
peculiarity.

“The time has passed,” he says--with burlesque drollery--“when the true
Englishman remained at table for several hours after dinner and ended by
slumbering beneath it. Now, when the ladies have quitted the
dining-room, the gentlemen content themselves with circulating the
Bordeaux for twenty minutes. In France we are beginning to divest
ourselves of certain prejudices concerning the English. For a long time
we regarded the English character as synonymous with ‘spleen.’ It was an
old French author who said of the English: ‘They amuse themselves sadly,
after the custom of their country.’

“The fact is the English are gay in their own fashion, and sometimes
even expansive and noisy; but they are not gay with everybody, nor on a
first acquaintance. They must unfreeze; they are like the wine of
Bordeaux, which, to give forth its fragrance, has to be warmed.”

After this, however, a very dubious compliment is paid to our
compatriots. “It is certain that this race is robuster than others, the
women as well as the men. It spends more, consumes more, and absorbs
more. See how well these pretty white and red-complexioned Englishwomen
can take their sherry and their champagne! Observe them in the middle of
the day going to exercise their palate at the pastry-cook’s with coffee,
chocolate, ices, all kinds of cakes and sandwiches; you are staggered at
the quantity of these delicacies they can put out of sight. See them at
the buffets of all those official fêtes of which they form the finest
ornament. It is a pleasure to see them, especially when you know that
their appetite is not destructive of sentiment.” Now, however, for a
compliment which is absolutely sincere. “We venture to say that English
society in Paris has exercised a salutary influence on French society,
and that it has introduced cordiality into intimate relationships. The
handshake of the English lady, for instance, has long shocked, and still
shocks our purists. Their fault is that they believe an amiable woman
must be too accessible, and that a certain liberty of manners implies an
equal liberty of conduct. With such ideas as these they bring up
daughters who, having given the tips of their fingers, imagine that they
have given everything and have no longer anything to protect; whereas a
pretty little English girl who gives her hand gives nothing else, and
knows how to defend the rest.”

Another trait of the English character is, we are assured, an “interest
in religious questions.” English ladies are “all more or less
theologians--veritable doctors in petticoats. English girls will hold
forth to you on the subject of grace and free will. You will meet them
at church, listening to sermons and going through services, and even
taking notes. But what does that matter, since it does not prevent them
from serving out the tea admirably, from rearing their children later
on, and from being model housewives and model mothers? If our
Frenchwomen cry ‘Fie’ upon the blue-stocking, that is perhaps because it
is too green; a little theology would not hurt them. It is at church
that you get the most comprehensive view of English society in Paris. On
Sunday you have only to visit the Faubourg St.-Honoré towards two
o’clock; you will encounter quite a procession of English men and women
coming from the Rue d’Agnesseau, with their prayer-books and their
Sunday demeanour. I say the church, but I ought to say the churches; for
the English have nowadays in Paris almost as many chapels as religions.
There is the Embassy chapel for Anglicans of the established religion,
an English episcopal chapel in the Rue Bayard, another English chapel in
the Rue Royale, a Scotch Presbyterian chapel and two English Methodist
places of worship in the Rue Roquepine, independently of American
chapels. This is not to say that the English observe Sunday in Paris as
strictly as they are obliged to do in their own country. Respect for the
Sabbath is an observance which they know very well how to dispense with
amongst foreigners. On Sunday, from time to time, you see some
individual in black attire, and invariably adorned with an umbrella,
who, seated on one of the seats in a public garden, pretends to ignore a
little pamphlet which is intended to be picked up by the first
pedestrian who passes, and which turns out to be a dissertation on the
observance of the Sabbath. There are still, perhaps, a few hotels
specially designed for English people, where the Bible Society causes to
be placed in every bedroom a copy of the Scriptures bearing its own
stamp. This ardour of propagandism has begun, however, to abate, and the
English in general are by no means the last to take advantage of the
Paris Sunday. Anyone who has seen the Sabbath of London must feel the
difference. Every Frenchman who has just missed dying, not only of
ennui, but of hunger and thirst, during the hours of service in
England--hearing his footsteps resound in the desolate streets--will
understand the solace experienced by an Englishman on finding that the
coast is clear for him at Paris and Versailles. There are, it is true, a
certain number of English families who do not receive on Saturday
evening because the festivity or the dancing might encroach upon the
Sabbath; but what is a sin on English territory is not so on French
territory, and the English do not scruple to pass midnight in a Parisian
drawing-room.”

This drolly severe but, from a literary point of view, admirable writer
seems to think that an Englishman is a sort of fox-terrier, or mastiff,
which having been chained up for a length of time becomes, when you let
him loose, extremely rampant and ill-conducted. “There are so many
things the English would not do at home, that they do without scruple
amongst foreigners. Once abroad they indemnify themselves for their
national reserve; it is on the foreigner that they revenge themselves
for the shackles of their own etiquette and social laws. In crossing the
Channel they pitch their solemn vestments into the sea. In London they
will not go to the opera dressed in anything but black; here they go in
a tweed coat and a slouch hat.” After this Monsieur Lemoinne seems very
much upset by the moustaches which Englishmen display as they promenade
in the Boulevards. There was a time, he assures us, when a Frenchman
crossing the Channel and wishing to have a fashionable air was obliged
to sacrifice his moustache--a time when English caricaturists never
represented a Frenchman without a pair of long, ill-combed moustaches.
To-day the thing is reversed. It is the Englishman who wears this
grotesque appendage which proclaims his nationality from afar. Thus
moustached, the Englishman goes to Paris--so M. Lemoinne evidently
thinks--to have his full fling. “Amongst us,” he says, “a grave man may
occasionally dress up to go to a ball, wear fancy costume, or take part
in a quadrille, and next morning resume his function as state councillor
or referendary. So the Englishman precipitates himself into the French
world as into a great masked ball, puts on a false nose, dances at Paris
extravagant steps which he calls French dances, cuts capers, sups and
gets maudlin, and when he has finished his French tour, tranquilly
resumes his duties as member of parliament or no matter what.”

To English ladies M. Lemoinne is a good deal more gallant. He is obliged
to point out that they over-dress and stride along the Boulevards like
dismounted dragoons. “Yet, make no mistake,” he adds. “In that still
crude block there are all the elements of a superb work of art. What
fine construction, what solid layers, what grand architecture! Wait till
art has put her hand to these materials; wait till the Englishwoman has
learned how to walk, carry herself, and dress, and until, to her native
beauty, she has added acquired grace--then you will have the finest type
of creation and of civilisation. The native Englishwoman who has become
a naturalised Parisian is perfection.”

In spite of the modified tribute which this writer pays to Englishwomen,
it may be said that he has handled our nation very roughly. In the
present day England and France would no longer, in a European war, fight
side by side as they did in the Crimea; and a little unconscious
Anglophobia tinctures the writings even of such a skilful and impartial
essayist as M. Lemoinne. The Americans in Paris are regarded, by French
writers generally, from a much more favourable point of view. Let us, in
the first place, hear what M. André Léo has to say on this subject. “If
you walk through the Champs Élysées, from the Place de la Concorde to
the Arc de l’Étoile, or through the avenues which converge there, from
the direction of the Madeleine, in the Quartier St.-Honoré towards the
Parc Monceaux, you will frequently meet women richly adorned, men with
light-coloured beards, tranquil and placid; young women of lively and
decided mien, pretty children with curly hair, whose physiognomy is at
once full of candour and of assurance. All these individuals, isolated
or grouped, offer you pretty nearly the same type; a countenance which
is strong in comparison with the small, piercing grey eyes, and
flexible features, often agreeable, and sometimes beautiful.... All
nationalities, indeed, meet and knock against each other in this new
quarter with its fine avenues and its sylvan groves. But there is an
evident predominance of English and American language and customs, as
appears from the signs over the chemists’ shops, the stores, the
boarding-houses, and the special pastry-cooks, where cakes, pies, and
puddings are displayed in the window. Yet although in this region a
unity of language and conformity of habits unite the English and the
Americans, the two societies intermix very little. Anglophobia, as a
national and popular sentiment, is perhaps more ardent in the United
States than amongst us.”

[Illustration: IN THE FLOWER MARKET.]

In a general way the resident American population of Paris consists of
the Diplomatic body, bankers, families who have come for the education
of their children, and artists eager to study the masterpieces of the
Parisian galleries. The American nation is accused of being devoid of
artistic sentiment; but M. André Léo stoutly protests that “such a
criticism passed upon a new people, who have been obliged to occupy
themselves before everything with work and industry, is too hasty.
American artists already exist; and already their efforts and their
ambitions foretell the development of that noble and precious human
faculty the germ of which exists in every people and every man, but
which necessitates a certain leisure and a certain mental education.”

Apart from the American residing in Paris, and the American who, binding
himself to the nation by more than lengthened residence, has married
into some French family--an occurrence by no means rare--there is the
flying American visitor to Paris, whose headquarters are the Grand Hotel
on the Boulevard des Italiens. This establishment, by its central
position, its interior arrangements, its luxury and its comfort, enjoys
an enormous reputation on the other side of the Atlantic. The Yankee
leaves New York for the Grand Hotel. It is not till he passes its
threshold that he feels himself on terra firma again; it is here that he
finds out where he is and gets his information. If his means or his
projects permit it, he installs himself at this hotel for three or four
months; if not, he goes on to some other hotel or boarding-house, or
else rents an apartment to live by himself. If you enter the courtyard
of the Grand Hotel, ascend the portico steps, and, making your way into
the stately readingroom, look out of the window for five minutes, you
will see that the innumerable vehicles which every few seconds stop at
the hotel deposit ten Americans to one Englishman.

From this centre the tourist easily gets to all those points of the city
to which necessity or curiosity impels him. The first visit he pays is
probably to his banker--to Bowles and Devritt, perhaps, in the Rue de la
Paix, or to Norton’s in the Rue Auber. Once he banked with the firm of
Rothschild, but now no longer. During the American war M. de
Rothschild’s attitude in reference to the planters was by no means
neutral, and this political indiscretion has cost him his American
clients.

When the New York party has cashed its cheque at the American
bank--which is quite a rendezvous for trans-Atlantics and at which all
the American newspapers can be seen--the feminine element hastens to
visit all the most fashionable shops. The ladies are eager to purchase,
at comparatively low prices, those Parisian costumes which their own
native custom-house raises to prices so exorbitant. Dressed ere long in
the richest and newest fashions, they step with their male companions
into a carriage and drive to the Bois de Boulogne; then they go to the
opera, to spectacles of every kind, and to the Legation. If there
happens to be a sovereign on the throne, they put their names down for
presentation at the Tuileries and order a court costume. For it must be
confessed that the Americans are fond of the pomps of this world, and
that, Republicans as they profess to be, they have no prejudice against
kings and princes outside their own country. The monarchs of other
nations neither shock nor terrify them. And the American tourist, apart
from the question of political sentiment, likes to see everything and do
everything before he recrosses the Atlantic. If an American family
visits a land where it is the fashion to be presented at court, they
will feel humiliated and ashamed should they have to confess afterwards
to their compatriots that they missed the presentation.

Under the last Empire the American visitors to Paris showed an eagerness
for court-presentations which would have entitled them to a place in
Thackeray’s Book of Snobs--which, nevertheless, directly or indirectly,
embraces pretty nearly the whole human species. But there were a certain
number of Americans then in France who got acclimatised to the
splendours of the court and became habitual guests at imperial
residences. The drawing-room of the United States minister is naturally
the centre of meeting for American society in Paris. “The aspect and
tone of these assemblies,” says a French writer, “is at once less solemn
and colder than our French social gatherings. The necessity of being
previously presented exists in this democratic society just as it does
in England, though on the other hand American conversation and behaviour
bear a natural impress of indifference and freedom, not even to the
exclusion, perhaps, of a little coarseness.”

Curiously enough, the Americans, although they despise or affect to
despise social and genealogical distinctions in their own country, turn
to some extent into aristocrats during the voyage across the Atlantic to
Europe. Frenchmen have noticed that if you wish to be presented to their
minister or at one of their drawing-rooms in Paris, you must never
forget your ancestry. “A certain author of my acquaintance,” says André
Léo, “a man of genuine fame, was sufficiently astonished, on reading his
American letter of introduction, to find that it recommended him much
less on his own account than on that of his grandfather. This is not an
isolated case; it results from a law much more human than national,
which consists in particularly prizing what one does not possess. The
Americans, a people without ancestors, naturally hold race distinctions
in high esteem. They boast, one against the other, of belonging to the
first founders of the colonies, and even in their own country these
pretensions sometimes provoke laughter.... As to nobilary titles, if you
possess any, be particularly careful to let them be known, and rest
assured that when once they have been declared the Americans will not
fail to apply them to you. These titles will win for you sweet glances,
and should you be contemplating marriage will turn the scale in your
favour with those blonde beauties who, for the most part, have
Californian dowries; for these Republican young women think that a ducal
coronet sits marvellously well on blonde hair, and that the title of
Countess is the finishing ornament required by an elegant lady. Hence it
is that at Paris numerous alliances are contracted between the France
of other days and the America of to-day.”

In the United States, so soon as a merchant has done some great stroke
of business, or has pierced a big vein of ore in his mine, or has seen
the petroleum spouting up on his land too fast for an adequate supply of
barrels, his daughters are consumed with a desire to visit Europe. They
sail thither, accompanied by the father, who pretends to despise the
Continent, but who, inwardly, is scarcely less curious to explore it
than his fair-haired children. And as a matter of fact the Americans may
well be desirous to see that region of the world whence they derive
everything but their liberty and their wealth. For their religion, their
language, their literature, their arts and sciences, their memories, and
the very blood which courses in their veins, they are indebted to
Europe. In America, although an enormous number of books and newspapers
are published, the English and French classics, not to mention the best
English and French modern authors, form the foundation of every good
library, and even the native writers fashion themselves after European
models.

As regards the American families residing in Paris for the education of
their children, it is music and the French language which they have
chiefly in view. Some years ago M. André Léo observed that young
American girls in Paris received a much severer education than their
brothers. The instruction of the daughters “is, or appears, very
complex; that of the sons much less so, for as a rule, having their own
fortune to make, they early precipitate themselves into commercial life.
But the young girl, whether intended for an instructress or working
merely for the development and adornment of her person, devotes herself
to studies which amongst us would pass for pedantic. Some of them learn
Latin, algebra, geometry, and even attack without alarm more special
sciences. Yet look at them and be reassured. The care of their toilette
has not suffered from all this, and the accusations of ungracefulness
cast against learned women fall before the display of their luxurious
frivolity. See if the waves of silk, of muslin, of lace, which surround
them are less abundant on that account; if the details of their exterior
show a lesser degree of feminine art, if the whole has a lesser
freshness.” This writer proceeds to insist on the superiority of the
American woman over her male compatriot. The explanation is, according
to him, that at fourteen years of age the American boy shuts up his
books to enter the office of his father or some other merchant, and
consecrates his whole intelligence to commercial speculations; whereas
the young girl pursues her studies, strengthens them sometimes by
teaching, and, spinster or wife, has always abundant leisure for mental
exercise. The one point on which, in M. André’s view, the studious
American woman exposes herself to reproach, is that hitherto she has not
used her intellectual superiority for the furtherance of her own dignity
and independence.

That she is nevertheless a powerful social factor, M. André himself
admits, though he attributes this less to her activity than to her
fascinations as a beauty in repose. “The first duty and the first pride
of an American husband is” he says, “to ensure the idleness of his wife
and provide for the expenses of her toilette.” There are in the United
States many women-workers, whether as preceptresses or clerks in the
postal, telegraphic, or even ministerial offices. These are nearly all
spinsters--the single state being frequent in New England, which vies
with the Mother Country for the supremacy of the feminine
population--and they give in their resignation when they get married. “I
will not let my wife work,” such is the husband’s proud determination.
Here, however, one imperative reason why women must resign their
employment on marriage is overlooked. In London the numberless women
engaged in the post and telegraph offices are required by the
authorities to abdicate their posts on becoming wives, simply because
they would obviously be unable to work their nine hours a day at a desk
or counter if they had absorbing domestic duties to attend to and
children to rear.

To Englishmen, who are already acquainted with their Transatlantic
brethren, a French view of the American in Paris would be more
instructive than an English one. What particularly strikes Parisians is
the freedom of American girls as contrasted with the restraint of
unmarried young women in France, whose training is notoriously very much
that of a convent. “American manners,” the French observe, “grant to
girls entire liberty. They are the guardians of their own virtue and
their own interests, and they preserve these things right well.
Instructed in the dangers of life, they are capable of braving them;
though it must be owned that their task is easy on account of the
respect which, throughout their country, is shown to them by men. A girl
can travel the length and breadth of the territory of the Union without
having to fear dishonourable pursuits or the slightest unpleasantness.
Therefore the American girl utterly differs from ours by her aspect
alone.” Her costume is more unstudied, and the mouse-like timidity of
the young Frenchwoman is replaced in her by a graceful carelessness.

[Illustration: AFTER THE THEATRE.]

To Americans, as M. André justly says, Paris must seem “a world upside
down. American mothers complain greatly of the little security and
respect shown to women in this capital, of the gallantry of the French
and the indulgence of public opinion in flagrant cases. They are right;”
and he thinks that it is because French girls are too severely
disciplined, too much caged up, that there is less reverence between the
two sexes in France than in America. “True chastity,” he maintains, “has
liberty for her sister.”

American girls staying in Paris are astonished and indignant at the
close surveillance to which unmarried young Frenchwomen are subjected,
although they themselves frequently sacrifice to opinion in the matter
of not appearing out of doors unaccompanied by a maid. M. André regrets
this on account of the countenance it gives to a prudish system, which
he is the last to admire in his own countrywomen. “O young ladies,” he
exclaims, “born on a soil where monarchical influences have never
flourished, why do you submit to this shameful spy system? Would it not
be better if you openly showed your disdain for it, and taught our women
the manners of liberty? Paris, after all, is not a forest, and a mere
glance, a shrug of the shoulders, or silence itself, will suffice to
shame away a leering lounger or an impertinent snob. Is it true, then,
that in default of other forms of tyranny, respect for opinion, whatever
that opinion be, is a yoke in America?”

Let us hope, in conclusion, that the American girl does not “let herself
go,” on her return from straitlaced Paris to the freedom of New York, at
all events to such an extent as suggested by this writer, who assures us
that, having once set foot again on native soil, she flirts furiously.

[Illustration: AT THE SALON.]

CHAPTER III.

MORE PARISIAN TYPES.

The Spy--Under Sartines and Berryer--Fouché--Delavau--The Present
System--The Écuyère--The Circus in Paris.

To return, however, to native Parisian types. Mention has already been
made of the French spy, but he is such an important and historical
character that it is impossible to dismiss him in a few words.

The police, already strongly organised under Louis XIV., resorted
largely to espionage; but in Louis XV.’s reign the famous Lieutenant of
Police, de Sartines, fashioned the spy system into a civil institution,
and gave it a prodigious development. Spies were now employed to follow
the Court or to watch the doings of distinguished foreigners who had
recently arrived in the capital. Then there were domestic spies, the
most terrible of all, to judge by the following observations extracted
from a report attributed to Louis XV.’s lieutenant. “The ‘family,’
amongst us, lives under the protection of a reputation for virtue which
cannot impose on the magistracy; the family is a repertory of crimes, an
arsenal of infamies. The hypocrisy of the false caresses which are
lavished in it must be apparent to all but fools. In a family of twenty
persons the police ought to place forty spies.” After Sartines,
Lieutenant Berryer by no means allowed the spy service to deteriorate.
He employed convicts as spies, one of the conditions of their employment
being that on the slightest failure in the vile duties they had to
perform, they should be restored to prison. The services, too, of
coachmen, landladies, lodgers, were called into requisition. Even
domestic servants were sometimes Berryer’s agents, and many a mysterious
_lettre-de-cachet_ was issued on the strength of some word uttered
carelessly within the hearing of a lady’s-maid or valet-de-chambre.

Stories are even told of men so innocent that they acted as spies
without being aware of it. Such a one was Michel-Perrin, of Mme. de
Bawr’s tale, which, in its dramatic form, gave Bouffé one of his best
parts. The simple-minded man had in his youth, when he was a student of
theology, known Fouché, afterwards to become Napoleon’s Minister of
Police. In due time Michel-Perrin took orders, and was doing duty in a
little village when, under the Revolution, public worship was abolished.
Calling upon Fouché to ask his old friend for some suitable employment,
he can obtain nothing until, moved by the urgency of his solicitations,
the Police Minister suggests to him, with so much delicacy that his true
meaning remains unperceived, that he shall walk about the public places,
go into cafés and restaurants, and frequent all kinds of resorts where
people congregate, and that he shall then return to Fouché with an
account of anything remarkable he may have seen or heard. This seems to
the delighted Michel-Perrin mere child’s play, and he regards it as
little more than a pretext on the part of the generous minister for
handing him every evening a gold piece. When, however, the unconscious
spy finds one day that he has revealed a political conspiracy, and
jeopardised the lives of many, perhaps innocent men, he suddenly awakens
to a sense of what he has been doing, and in horror throws up his
employment. Fouché, it seems, was pained to have humiliated the
unoffending priest, and, public worship being just at that time
restored, he used his influence with Napoleon to obtain the ingenuous
man’s re-appointment as village curé.

Under the Revolution the spy was replaced by the official denunciator,
an agent no less formidable. At length came the Empire, and then Fouché
invested espionage with the importance of a science. In 1812 the
“brigade of safety” appeared, which was first composed of four agents,
but which, in 1823 and 1824, always under the direction of the famous
Vidocq, numbered close upon thirty. Delavau, the prefect of police, had
permitted him to establish, on the public road, a game known as
“troll-madam”; and this game, an excellent trap for boobies and
passers-by whose slightest words and actions were keenly watched by
Vidocq’s hounds, produced, from the 20th of July to the 4th of August,
1823, a net profit of 4,364 francs. This sum was added to the subvention
already granted to the spy department.

The Prefect Delavau returned to the method of Lieutenant Berryer in
employing as spies convicts, whom he threw back into prison for the
slightest fault. One of his predecessors, Baron Pasquier, had
endeavoured, like Berryer, to enlist domestic servants into the secret
police force; and, with this object, Delavau renewed an old ordinance,
calling upon them to get their names noted in the books of the
prefecture every time they entered a situation or left one. The
domestics, however, perceived the motive of Delavau’s measure, and were
so unanimous in withholding their names from the books in question, that
all idea of family espionage, on which much value had been set, was soon
to be abandoned. Delavau drew even more largely upon the criminal class
for his myrmidons than Pasquier had done, and in his day no public
gathering took place at which some felon, released for the purpose from
gaol, was not lurking about for an ill-sounding word or a suspicious
gesture. Such agents as these worked with the industry of bloodhounds.
“Between the populace and the subalterns of the police,” says the
historian Peuchet, “there is a continual war; the latter are ill-bred
dogs who seize every opportunity for applying their fangs. The police
will never inspire respect for order so long as part of its force
consists of released gaol-birds who owe a grudge to the whole of the
people. When these two elements are in contact there is inevitably a
fermentation.” The justice of these remarks was recognised by M.
Delavau’s successor, M. de Belleyme, whose first care was to dismiss and
even restore to their respective prisons this army of felon-spies.
To-day, although he has not risen much in public estimation, the spy of
the police-force is a citizen in every sense of the word, enjoying all
the rights of a Frenchman, and not obtaining his commission from the
prefecture until after his past life and his moral character have stood
the test of a keen investigation. Thus espionage has been purified as
far as that is possible; but whether the system is not in itself
essentially immoral, is a question which has exercised the minds even of
such writers as Montesquieu. “Espionage,” he says, “is never tolerable;
if it were so it would be practised by honest men; but the necessary
infamy of the person indicates the infamy of the thing.” This is in
effect another version of the famous utterance of Argenson, who,
reproached with employing as spies none but rogues and villains,
exclaimed: “Find me honest men who will do this work.” The present
prefecture of police believes it has found such men, and the discovery,
if it has really been made, is a fortunate one indeed.

Another variety of police spy to be met with in Paris is the officious
volunteer spy. He may belong to the lower or to the higher ranks of
society. He takes upon himself to observe and to denounce, without
instructions, and solely in the hope of a pecuniary recompense. This
variety is probably the most contemptible and the vilest. It should be
mentioned, too, that the French capital swarms with invisible and
unrecognisable spies, disguised, as they sometimes are, beneath an
appearance of luxury or magnificence. This or that personage passes for
a member of the diplomatic service. He is an admired figure in
fashionable drawing-rooms, and while affecting to converse on the
European situation, exercises the ear of a fox terrier and the eye of a
hawk. Then, of course, there is the military spy, who is superior to the
civil variety inasmuch as whilst the latter, in case of recognition,
only incurs a more or less disagreeable misadventure, the former is
liable to be shot. The military spy, therefore, may have all the heroism
of the professed soldier.

The civil spy system was naturally developed to an extraordinary degree
by the subtle Richelieu. His secret agent took as many shapes as
Proteus. Now it was a brave old seigneur, infirm and professedly deaf,
in whose presence people would not hesitate to speak out and say
everything, but who recovered his vigour and his legs in order to go and
report to the cardinal a conversation of which he had not missed one
detail. Now it was a woman, who, having insinuated herself into the
intimate friendship of some young and brilliant courtier, wrested from
him a dangerous and terrible secret. But it was not only throughout the
length and breadth of France that Richelieu had spies; numbers of them
were in his pay abroad, all over the Continent indeed, regularly
reporting political intrigues, and furnishing clandestine copies of
secret treaties.

Enough, however, of the spy; let it simply be added that he has been
introduced into two novels by Balzac, into one by Hugo, and into two by
Alexandre Dumas, who has likewise made him figure in a couple of plays.

Let us pass from the most slinking and distasteful Paris character to
the most open and, as many consider, the most charming one--from the
“espion,” that is to say, to the “écuyère.”

At Paris the circus-woman is the object of a much higher admiration than
in London. Théophile Gautier, in his dramatic feuilletons, has
frequently shown that he preferred the equestrian fairy of the circus to
the sylph who dances at the opera. He goes into ecstasies over her
agility, vigour, and courage, and is displeased with nothing but the
drapery in which her lower limbs are enveloped, holding that, just as
the most virtuous fashionable woman or actress takes care to exhibit her
bare arms if they are beautiful, so the “écuyère” of the circus should
be allowed to display the full symmetry and grace of her legs. The
“écuyère” whom Balzac brings on the scene in his _Fausse Maîtresse_,
Malaga by name, is an excellent type of the French circus-woman, who is
nearly always without relatives, sometimes a foundling, sometimes a
stolen child, and who, coming one knows not whence, goes, the idol of a
day, one knows not where. “At the fair,” says the greatest of French
novelists--or rather, one of his characters--“this delicious Columbine
used to carry chairs on the tip of her nose--the prettiest little Greek
nose I ever saw. Malaga, madame, is skill personified. Of Herculean
strength, she only requires her tiny fist or diminutive foot to rid
herself of three or four men. She is, in fact, the goddess of
gymnastics. Careless as a gipsy, she says everything that enters her
head; she thinks as much of the future as you do of the halfpence you
throw to beggars, and sometimes sublime things escape from her. No one
could ever persuade her that an old diplomatist is a beautiful youth; a
million could not change her opinion. Her love is, for whoever inspires
it, a perpetual flattery. Endowed as she is with really insolent health,
her teeth are thirty-two exquisite pearls encased in coral.”

The performances of the Paris circus-woman too closely resemble those of
her sister in London to need description. The characters, however, of
the two equestrians are not identical, and that of the écuyère can
scarcely be represented better than in the words of a vivacious French
writer, who says: “You can easily imagine what must be, not the future
(alas! has she one?), but the present of this poor, intrepid, careless
creature. After being exposed twenty times a day to the risk of breaking
her jaw, she has hardly earned her food; and every morning she has to
wash, stretch, and otherwise renovate the costume in which she is to
dazzle her spectators at night.... Some of these circus-women marry a
Hercules or a professional fool; at the third or fourth child Mme.
Hercules or Mme. Fool takes her mare by the head, kisses her on the
nose, and bids a weeping adieu to the brave, affectionate beast, the
only friend who has never beaten her. It is done: the whole
family--husband, wife and children, go forth to try their luck as
strolling players. Their theatre is the fair in summer and the street in
winter. Hercules will lift, at arm’s length, enormous weights, and the
children will form the living column, or dance on the rope, while the
mother, as short-skirted as ever, but now plump enough to burst her
vestments, will contribute some kind of music or exhort the outside
public to enter the show.” She frequently fills up her intervals with
fortune-telling; informs young women whether they will be married the
same year, and whether the visionary swain is fair or dark; lets married
men know if their wives are faithful, and wives if their husbands are
engaged in amours. Nurse-maids learn from her that in the mounted
gendarmerie or the cuirassiers there is a hero of six-feet-six, only
awaiting an opportunity of declaring his passion.

This, however, is a sketch of the more fortunate of the strolling circus
artists. Occasionally the husband breaks a limb, or kills himself in
attempting some daring feat; in that case his family is often reduced to
beggary or something worse.

CHAPTER IV.

THE DOMESTIC.

The French Servant, as described by Léon Gozlan and by Mercier--The Cook
and the Cordon Bleu--The Valet.

It has already been seen that domestics have at different periods been
employed in Paris as spies.--According to Léon Gozlan, writing of his
own period, “the police of Paris is almost entirely occupied with the
misdeeds of domestics. Nearly all domestics are thieves or spies, and
they get more so as they grow older. The most honest amongst them steals
at least ten sous a day from his master.” It is to be hoped that if they
steal in this amusingly regular fashion, they at least observe the kind
of morality which has been noticed in some of the inferior state
officials of Russia. One of these complained that a colleague of his was
dishonest and helped himself to things which belonged to the State. “But
you do the same thing yourself,” suggested a friend. “True,” was the
reply; “but this fellow steals too much for his place.”

Let us, however, turning from drollery and from Léon Gozlan--who can
hardly have been quite serious--glance at the household servant of Paris
as a factor in the Parisian community. The French domestic, whether
valet, lackey, or lady’s-maid, is more important and influential than
the domestic of England. It is true that occasionally in an English
house some servant practically rules the family, and that the
relationship between employer and employed becomes so reversed that the
mistress is afraid to ring her drawing-room bell. As a rule, however, in
England the domestic is a nonentity. The man-servant or maid-servant who
waits at an English table is absolutely ignored, and is not even
supposed to understand the conversation which accompanies dinner, nor to
laugh at jokes indulged in by the host or his guests. An English servant
nowadays who shook with laughter at what he overheard in the
dining-room, like black Sambo at Mr. Sedley’s, would be cautioned if not
cashiered. The French domestic is a personage and a power. The “trade of
lackey,” according to Fabrice, in “Gil Blas,” requires a man of superior
intellect. The true lackey “does not go through his duties like a ninny;
he enters a house to command rather than to serve. He begins by studying
his master: he notes his defects, gains his confidence, and ultimately
leads him by the nose.... If a master has vices, the superior genius who
waits upon him flatters them, and often indeed turns them to his own
advantage.” Awaiting the day when he shall himself be great, the
liveried aspirant takes the name of his master when he is with other
lackeys, adopts his manners and apes his gestures; he carries a gold
watch and wears lace; he is impertinent and foppish. “Bon chien se forme
sur maître,” says the French proverb, and the Parisian domestic
religiously takes after his master, even though, as far as intrinsic
resemblance goes, he might simply be an ape in his master’s clothes.

[Illustration: A FAIR.]

That vanity characterises French servants is undeniable. Against the
charge of cupidity, however, which is brought against them, even by
French writers, must be set off one or two famous instances in which
valets have supported their ruined masters for ten or twenty years out
of their own savings. Mercier, all the same, represents the Paris
domestic as hardly less a rogue than does Léon Gozlan. “Out of ten
servants,” he assures us, “four are thieves.” Another native writer,
while not undertaking to combat this proposition, finds a defence for
the accused domestics. “If they are thus, who,” he asks, “has perverted
them? Who, either by example or complicity, has made them thieves and
spies? Every year is committed, to the prejudice of the country and of
agriculture, an abominable crime, namely, the stealing of individuals,
strong and useful, snatched at once from the sunlight and from
simplicity of manners, to be degraded, and sullied with a livery; to
have imposed upon them their master’s vices and follies, and to be
turned into idlers and good-for-nothings, flatterers and procurers.”

Paul Louis Courier looked forward to the time when domestic servitude
would be replaced by household service rendered freely, as if in virtue
of a contract between man and man; and in Paris, as in other capitals,
this state of things seems to be fast approaching, not as the result of
any benignant feeling on the part of the rich towards the poor, but
because, with the spread of education and of democratic ideas, a
disinclination to remain constantly at the orders of another person is
gradually extending. Already servants demand a greater number of
holidays than in ancient times; and there are many who, like the London
charwoman and the “laundress” of the Inns of Court, are ready to give
their services during the day-time, and even until a late hour in the
evening, while reserving to themselves the right of returning, after
their labours, to their own domicile.

There is much to be said, no doubt, on the other side. If there are
masters and mistresses without consideration for their servants, there
are servants who, having kind masters and mistresses, show themselves
without gratitude. But we are dealing specially with French servants,
who, apart from all question of good conduct or bad, enjoy certain
privileges not formally recognised as lawfully belonging to servants in
England. The bonne, for instance, or the cook, who goes to market to
purchase provisions considers herself entitled to “make the handle of
the basket dance”--“fair danser l’anse du panier”--to appropriate, that
is to say, a portion of the things she has bought, or of the money she
has nominally spent, to her own uses. In like manner the house-porter,
or “concierge,” takes for himself, as a matter of course, so many logs
out of every basket of wood ordered by the different tenants, of whom
there are often some half-dozen in the same house. In France, as in
other countries, a valet will sometimes wear his master’s clothes, and
the Parisian lady’s-maid asserts and enforces, more perhaps than in any
other capital, her claims to her mistress’s cast-off apparel.

The cook--both the “cuisinier” and the “cuisiniêre”--has already been
dealt with in a special chapter. It may here, however, be remarked, that
though the best cooks, and certainly the most expensive ones, are in
France, as in other countries, men, the female cook is far indeed from
being held in disesteem. The “cordon bleu,” or blue ribbon, was a
distinction conferred upon the female, not upon the male cook; and a
woman who cooks particularly well is called to this day a “cordon bleu.”
Such a woman was in the service for many years of the well-known
“bourgeois de Paris,” as Dr. Véron loved to describe himself.

If every French servant looks for some particular perquisite, they all
expect a gratuity at the New Year. One of the greatest curses and
greatest blessings which rest upon Paris is the custom of presenting New
Year’s gifts. The word “étrenne” is at once a terror and a joy to
Parisians, according as they belong to the class who give or the class
who receive. In London no gentleman would venture to omit at
Christmas-time to “tip” any one of the underlings who had ever cleaned
his boots, lifted his portmanteau, or twisted the ends of his moustache.
But in Paris, if a gentleman failed at the new year to present
“étrennes” to his boot-black, his messenger, or his valet, derision and
infamy would, according to a French writer, pursue him, not merely
throughout this life, but even beyond the tomb.

Cardinal Dubois, who had a reputation for niggardliness, used to give
his servants their “étrennes” in a manner which they could hardly have
relished. His major-domo came to him one New Year’s Day to demand the
annual gratuity. “Étrennes!” exclaimed the cardinal; “yes, I will give
you your étrennes. You may keep everything you have stolen from me
during the last twelvemonth.”

Let us, before quitting the subject of the Parisian domestic, relate an
anecdote or two. “When I come home,” said a master to his servant, “I
often find you asleep.” “That, sir,” replied the man, “is because I
don’t like to remain doing nothing.”

A nobleman paid a visit to Fontenelle one day, and found him in a very
bad humour. “What is the matter with you?” he asked. “The matter?”
replied Fontenelle; “I have a valet who serves me as badly as if I had
twenty.”

The Abbé de Voisenon preserved his gay humour to his very last gasp.
Just before his death he caused the leaden coffin which he had ordered
beforehand to be brought to his bedside. “There,” said he, “is my last
overcoat.” Then, turning towards one of his servants of whom he had had
reason to complain, he added, “I hope you will not wish to steal that
too.”

A certain high official of Paris lived in the country, and, thanks to
railway facilities, went home every evening to dine. On one occasion he
arrived earlier than usual, and going into his kitchen found the cook in
a decidedly unequivocal position, with a bottle in his hand,
three-fourths of whose contents had already found their way into his
stomach. “Ah, my fine fellow,” exclaimed the master, “I have caught you
drinking my wine.” “It is your own fault, sir,” was the reply. “You were
not due till four o’clock, and it is now hardly three.”

Our gallery of Paris types would scarcely be complete without a sketch
of a very familiar personage who, though not peculiar to Paris, abounds
there more than in other capitals. This is the “rentier,” the man of
“small, independent means.” According to the etymology of the word,
anyone should be called a rentier who lives on his “rentes”--the income,
that is to say, derived from the letting of houses or farms; or the
interest of money invested in the Funds. In practice, however, the name
is given exclusively to the man who lives on the interest of money which
he has invested in government securities. He has been described as the
corresponding type, in English society, to the man retired from
business. He lives modestly in the quarter of the Marais or of the
Batignolles, as in England he might live at Clapham or Brixton, at
Holloway, or Camden Town; and he passes a considerable portion of his
time in some favourite café, reading a newspaper of moderate-liberal
politics, or playing at dominoes. Condemned to economy, sometimes of the
most parsimonious kind, he counts every lump of sugar brought to him by
the waiter, and shows a great predilection for halfpenny rolls. In
politics, without being an aristocrat, he is something of a
conservative; and, while stickling for his rights, hates revolutions as
sure to cause perturbations in the securities of the state.

It was doubtless a rentier from whose pocket the thief in Lord Lytton’s
“Pelham” extracted, in a Paris café, a tiny packet which he had seen the
owner put carefully away in his coat-tail pocket, and which, on being
adroitly stolen and curiously examined, was found to contain, not a
precious stone, but a lump of sugar. In the rentier’s defence it may be
mentioned that during the great Napoleonic war, when a universal
blockade had been declared against English exports, and when colonial
produce was everywhere excluded from the ports of France, the price of
sugar rose to such a height as to render this luxury difficult for
persons of straitened means to indulge in.

The existence of such a number of rentiers in Paris goes far to
demonstrate the prudence of the ordinary Frenchman. An Englishman with a
few thousand pounds in his possession would, as a rule, speculate with
it, instead of burying it in the Funds. The speculation would furnish
him with active employment, whereas the permanent investment preferred
by the average Frenchman involves an idle and somewhat ignoble life.

CHAPTER V.

PARISIAN CHARACTERISTICS.

Parisian Characteristics--Gaiety, Flippancy, Wit--A String of Favourite
Anecdotes.

In our last few chapters we have been glancing about Paris for different
types of character. These are sufficiently varied even where they are
not absolutely dissimilar from each other. But there is one
characteristic which runs through the whole of them; the Parisian, be he
great or small, rich or poor, never loses his national gaiety. He laughs
through his tears and sometimes jests with his last breath.

This gaiety finds expression in manifold ways, and shows itself above
all in innumerable anecdotes. If, as Dr. Johnson maintained, the dullest
book is worth wading through if only it contains a couple of good
anecdotes, no apology need be made for presenting in this chapter a few
of those “bonnes histoires” in which Parisians delight, and which so
often illustrate their character.

Let us begin with one which is very French and particularly Parisian. A
poverty-stricken author, awaking suddenly at midnight, discerned in his
garret a burglar feeling in his empty cash-box. The author burst into a
laugh. The burglar, annoyed to find himself an object of ridicule,
inquired what the author could find so particularly amusing. “A thousand
pardons,” was the polite reply, “but I could not help smiling to see you
searching in the dark for what I shall be unable to find in the
daylight.”

A Parisian had been accustomed for twenty years to pass his evenings at
the house of a certain Mme. R----. He lost his wife, and everyone
expected he would marry the lady whom he had so assiduously visited.
When however, his friends urged him to do so, he refused, saying, “I
should no longer know where to pass my evenings.”

A general who had been beaten in Germany and in Italy perceived one day,
hanging over his door, a drum inscribed with this device: “I am beaten
on both sides.”

The Regent of Orleans wished to go to a masked ball without being
recognised. “I know how to manage it,” said the Abbé Dubois. During the
ball he set the Regent on his guard against disclosing his identity, by
dint of sundry admonitory kicks. The victim, finding the clerical foot
by no means a light one, whispered, “My dear Abbé, you disguise me too
much.”

A French soldier, not knowing how otherwise to pass his time, entered
the fashionable church of Saint-Roch. When the woman who receives money
for the use of chairs approached him and asked for five sous, “Five
sous?” he exclaimed. “If I had five sous I should not be here.”

A lady had a spoilt child, whose praises she was never tired of
sounding. “Your child is delightful,” said a visitor. “At what time does
he go to bed?”

Someone, in presence of the Abbé Trublet, was praising one day the soft
seductive manners of Mme. de Tencin, who was fascinating but without
principle. “Yes,” said the abbé, “if she wished to poison you she would
use the sweetest poison she could find.”

A Paris cabdriver, much vexed by the success of the omnibus, then just
introduced, determined to start an opposition. He proposed to take
passengers at four sous a head, and put this inscription outside his
vehicle: “Fiacribus at four sous.”

A Parisian boy was receiving a long lecture from his father on the
subject of his inattention, no matter what good advice might be given to
him. The boy lowered his head and seemed to be earnestly engaged in
listening to his parent’s observations. Suddenly, however, he exclaimed,
“Ninety-nine--one hundred! That is the hundredth ant, father, that has
gone into that little hole since you have been talking to me.”

[Illustration: PARISIAN TYPES--IN THE BARRACKS.]

A Parisian, who could not brook contradiction, fought fourteen duels by
way of maintaining his opinion that Dante was a greater poet than
Petrarch. When dying from the effects of a wound received in his last
encounter, he admitted to a friend that he had never read a line of
either poet.

A Parisian candidate for the degree of bachelor in letters was being
examined in history. He gave satisfactory answers to every question
until at last he was asked when Charlemagne lived. “Eight centuries
before Christ,” he replied. “You mean after Christ?” said the questioner
with a smile. “I am sorry to disagree with the board of examiners,”
answered the young man with some modesty, “but I maintain my opinion
that Charlemagne must have lived eight centuries before Christ.” This
determined student had, as a matter of course, to be plucked.

Two daughters of Paris, at the bedside of their dying father, who had
gained millions by usury, were shocked to hear the priest, who had just
received his confession, enjoin restitution as the only condition on
which he could possibly be saved. “For pity’s sake, father,” said the
girls, when the priest had left the room, “do nothing of the kind. You
will suffer for a short time, but after the first quarter of an hour you
will be like a fish in water.”

An impressionable Paris banker, the owner of immense riches, died of
grief on hearing that he had lost everything in the world except 100,000
francs. His pauper brother, on inheriting the sum, died of joy.

A Parisian husband, to whom his wife rendered but scant obedience, asked
her one day, when she was leaving the house, where she was going.
“Wherever I like,” she answered. “And when do you propose to come back?”
“Whenever I think fit,” she replied. “If you return one moment later,”
said the husband, with an air of menace, “I shall have a word with you.”

A Parisian schoolboy, meeting a little beggar in the street who declared
himself to be the most miserable boy alive, said to him, with an accent
of deep sympathy, “What! are you learning the Latin grammar?”

The Prince de Condé was one of the wittiest of Parisians. He had been
criticising severely a tedious tragedy called Zenobia, the work of the
Abbé d’Aubignac. “It is written strictly in accordance,” said one of the
Abbe’s defenders, “with the rules of Aristotle” “I don’t blame the
abbé,” replied Condé, “for having followed Aristotle, but I shall never
forgive Aristotle for having caused him to write so tedious a piece.”

A Parisian _grande dame_, before whom a gentleman had just taken out a
cigar, was asked whether she disliked the smell of tobacco. “I cannot
say,” she replied. “No one has ever smoked in my presence.”

The French are perhaps less celebrated than of old for their politeness.
It was a French preacher, however, who, in a sermon delivered before
Louis XIV., observed deferentially “we are nearly all mortal”; and it
was a French professor who, when Louis XVIII. had requested from him
some lessons in chemistry, began his explanations by saying, “These two
bodies, of opposite properties, will now have the honour of combining in
presence of your Majesty.”

A Parisian, in the midst of a dissipated life, was prevailed upon to
enter a monastery. Ere long he confessed to the Superior that in his
moments of solitude he was constantly assailed by a desire to return to
his former mode of existence. The Superior recommended him on these
occasions to ring the great bell of the monastery, which would at once
give him bodily exercise, distract him from evil thoughts, and be a
signal to the other monks to pray for him. He rang, however, so
frequently that the bell went on tolling all night, until at last
representations on the subject were made from the entire neighbourhood.

A cuirassier, who had seen and admired Horace Vernet’s military
pictures, called upon the great painter and asked how much he would
charge him for his portrait. “How much are you prepared to pay?” asked
Vernet. “I could go as high--as high as a franc and a half,” replied the
soldier. “Done,” said Vernet, and in a few minutes he had made a rapid
sketch of the warrior. As the cuirassier left the room he said to a
comrade who had been waiting for him at the door, “I got it done for a
franc and a half. But I am sorry, now, I did not bargain. He might have
taken a franc.”

Sophie Arnould’s dog having fallen ill, the celebrated actress sent him
for treatment to her friend Mesmer, inventor of the pretended science
which bears his name. In a few days the German physician returned the
dog with a letter certifying that it was quite well. The dog, however,
died on the way home. “What a comfort it is,” said Sophie, on seeing the
letter and the dead body, “to know that the poor animal died in good
health.”

On seeing the dancer, Madeleine Guimard, who was thin even to
scragginess, perform in a “pas de trois” with a robust male dancer
leaping about on each side of her, Sophie Arnould said that it was like
two dogs fighting for a bone.

A Parisian lady observed one day, in the presence of a man six feet high
who greatly admired her, that she did not like tall men. He redoubled
his attentions until, seeing her one day in rather a dreamy condition,
he asked her what she was thinking about. “I am wondering how it is,”
she replied, “that you seem to get smaller and smaller every day.”

The Abbé Fouquet was Mazarin’s spy, and he threw numberless Parisians
into the Bastille. One man, whom he sent there one day, saw a large dog
in the court-yard of the fortress-prison. “What has that dog done?” he
asked, “to get in a place like this?” “He has probably bitten the Abbé
Fouquet’s dog,” replied a veteran prisoner.

An amorous youth wished to send to the object of his affections a
passionate, but at the same time witty, epistle. After cudgelling his
brains for some hours to no purpose he went to a bookseller’s, bought a
“complete letter-writer,” and copied out what seemed to him the most
suitable missive, which he duly despatched. The young lady replied to
him next day as follows: “Turn to the next page and you will find my
answer.”

A Parisian publisher, extremely annoyed at having printed a big book of
which he could only sell four copies, bitterly reproached the author,
telling him that his works would not even give him bread. A vigorous
blow with the fist, which knocked out several of the publisher’s teeth,
was the only reply made by the haughty writer. Arrested by the police,
the latter, called upon to explain his conduct, extricated himself by
the following ingenious defence, at which the judge, the audience, and
even the plaintiff could not restrain their laughter. “Gentlemen,” he
said, “I confess that I acted with rather too much warmth. I knocked out
his teeth; but after all, what mischief is done? He told me my works
would not give him bread, and teeth are useless when there is nothing to
eat.”

The Marquis de Favières, a great borrower and notorious for never
returning his loans, went one day to the financier Samuel Bernard, and
said to him: “I am going to astonish you, sir. I am the Marquis de
Favières. I do not know you, and I have come to borrow five hundred
louis.” “Sir,” said Bernard, “I shall astonish you still more. I know
you, and I am going to lend you the money.”

The Parisian “badaud,” an intensification of the London Cockney, has a
reputation, moreover, for making blunders and bulls of the Irish kind.
One of them, hazarding some speculations on the subject of astronomy, is
said to have observed that the moon was a much more important orb than
the sun, because the sun “comes out only in the day-time, when everyone
can see perfectly well. The moon, on the other hand, shines in the
darkness, when a light to guide us is really wanted.”

Another Parisian of the dull species once wrote to a friend as follows:
“A man has just called me a villain, and threatened, if I ever speak to
him again, to kick me. What do you usually do in such a case?”

A Parisian who, without knowing much about horse-flesh, had just bought
a horse, was asked whether the animal was timid. “Not at all,” he
replied. “He has slept three nights running in the stable by himself.”
Another Parisian “sportsman” was reproached by a connoisseur with having
clipped his horse’s ears. He explained that the animal was in the habit,
whenever alarmed, of pricking up his ears, and that he had cut them in
order to cure him of his timidity.

A literary specimen of the Parisian Cockney is said to have written, in
an historical novel, the following remarkable sentence. “Before the year
1667 Paris at night was plunged in total darkness, which was made darker
than ever by the absence of gas-lights, not yet invented.”

In a Russian history of Poland, the Poles were seriously reminded that
it was not until after the partition of Poland that the streets of
Warsaw were lighted with gas.

CHAPTER VI.

THE STREETS.

The Arrangement of the Streets--System of Numbering the Houses--Street
Nomenclature--Street Lamps--The Various Kinds of Vehicles in Use.

We have already searched the streets of Paris for types of character.
Let us proceed to look at one or two characteristic street objects,
after first taking a general view of the streets themselves.

The streets of Paris divide themselves into two categories: those
parallel to the Seine and those at right angles to it. In the first the
numbers follow the course of the stream, in the second they begin from
that end of the street which is nearest to the river. The traveller,
however, finding himself in any particular street, cannot in the present
day tell at once to which category it belongs, inasmuch as the old
distinction of colour is no longer preserved, by which the parallel
streets used to be numbered in red, and those at right angles in black.

All the Paris streets are lit up throughout the night. Early in the
morning, before daylight, companies of scavengers collect the city
refuse in heaps which, some hours afterwards, are carted away into the
neighbouring country to fertilise the soil. During the day other
scavengers clear the highways of whatever dust or mud they may have
accumulated.

Every day in summer water-carts sprinkle the principal thoroughfares.
These carts carry behind them an apparatus which flings the water over
the whole width of the street. In streets which are rather narrow, or
when the cart cannot keep exactly to the middle, the pedestrians come in
for a part of the municipal spray, as also do vehicles which are low or
open. It is prudent, therefore, to keep one’s eye on the water-cart,
unless a gratuitous shower-bath is absolutely desired.

Every public way bears a distinctive name. Extended thoroughfares are
not infrequently divided up into portions, each named separately; this
is due sometimes to local circumstances, sometimes to the fact that in
the olden days it was a caprice of the citizens frequently to change the
title of the street in which they resided. It was not until the
seventeenth century that the municipal administration officially
intervened in this matter. Then, however, the titles were less often
derived from local circumstances, adulation lavishing on the highways
and byways the names of princes and other personages of wealth or power.
Under Louis XIV. a certain proportion of street names were also drawn
from royal victories or from those officers who had achieved them. The
Revolution inscribed with the names of its heroes, its martyrs, its
triumphs, its principles, not only the new streets which it opened, but
even the old ones from which it wished to efface monarchical titles. The
Empire followed the same system. The Restoration returned to the
Royalist traditions; and the monarchy of July united those of the
Revolution and the Empire, mingling the ancient glories of France with
the modern, and illustrious foreigners with natives of renown.

To pass, however, from streets to street-illumination. Parisians of
to-day, accustomed to the brilliancy of gas, which turns night almost
into day, can scarcely believe that two centuries ago their town knew no
other light than that of the moon and stars. It was the case,
nevertheless; previously to 1667 not a public lamp existed. The
necessity of street illumination had already, however, been recognised
by a civic regulation which required householders, in those localities
where garrotting had become too frequent, to place beneath their
first-floor window, at 9 p.m., a lantern which might cast its beams into
the street. It was M. de la Reynie, lieutenant of police for Paris, who
first, in 1667, instituted public lamps. At the outset a lamp was placed
at the end of each street, with a third in the middle. Then, after a
time, the number of lamps was increased in streets of exceptional
length. Each containing a candle, these “lanternes” were suspended by a
rope from a crooked iron bar in the form of the gallows.

The lamps introduced by La Reynie marked a certain progress in
civilisation. They at least diminished in a remarkable manner the number
of night attacks. La Reynie’s lanterns lasted until 1776, when they were
replaced by so-called reverbères, or reflecting lamps. In a few months
more than half the streets in Paris were illuminated by the new lamps,
which, with some modifications, remained in use until the introduction
of gas.

[Illustration: PARISIAN TYPES--IN SEARCH OF CIGAR-ENDS.]

The most celebrated of all the lamps in Paris was the lamp or
“lanterne” of the Place de la Grève, which on the outbreak of the
Revolution was made the instrument of several summary executions, the
first victims being two retired soldiers and Major de Losme, accused of
firing on the people at the capture of the Bastille. The cry of “À la
lanterne!” was now constantly raised; and when the emigration began a
number of aristocrats were dragged to the fatal lamp, but saved at the
last moment by the intervention of Bailly and La Fayette. The notorious
Foulon, detested by everyone, was really hanged from the fatal lamp. His
son-in-law, Bertier, was also dragged beneath the lamp, but he defended
himself, snatched a musket from one of his guards, and fought until he
was shot down. On the 5th of October the brave Abbé Lefèvre d’Ormesson,
a member of the Commune, was half hanged by a number of wild women.
Fortunately for him, the rope was cut before it had done its work. About
the same time the mob, perishing from hunger, hung to the lamp a baker
named François, accused of hoarding up his bread. François is said to
have been the “last man tied up to the illuminated gallows” of the Place
de la Grève. Camille Desmoulins published, some eighty years before
Henri Rochefort made use of the title, a pamphlet called “La Lanterne,”
or, to quote the title in full, “Discours de la Lanterne aux Parisiens.”
It bore this epigraph: “Qui male agit odit lucem,” which he translated
thus: “Only rogues fear the light.”

If, however, the public lamps of Paris are the most conspicuous street
objects by night, those which first strike the eye by day are
unquestionably the vehicles.

In France, as in other countries, carriages are comparatively of modern
invention; and when they were first introduced they were generally
condemned as calculated to do away with a taste for equitation and to
produce habits of effeminacy. The condition of the streets and public
thoroughfares would, in ancient times, have rendered the employment of
vehicles impossible, and thus persons who did not go on foot went on
horseback until the sixteenth century, when the use of the so-called
“Sedan-chairs” became general. Wheeled carriages were not absolutely
unknown, but in Francis I.’s reign there were but two, one belonging to
the king, the other to the queen. The privilege of constructing and
letting out Sedan-chairs, or “chaises à bras,” was granted by Louis
XIII. at the beginning of the seventeenth century to one of the officers
of his body-guard; and towards the end of the reign, after many other
inventions in the way of vehicles had been tried, two-wheeled chaises,
called “brouettes,” or “wheelbarrows,” were introduced by a Monsieur
Dupin, who received the king’s support in the shape of a formal
authorisation. There was now a great dispute between the privileged
makers of Sedan-chairs and the privileged makers of “wheelbarrows,”
which ended in this compromise--that the new wheelbarrows were not to be
allowed unless drawn exclusively by men. In the reign of Henry IV. the
carriage, or “carrosse,” was introduced: a heavy, lumbering vehicle,
whose windows were hung with leather curtains. The use of glass in
carriage windows had not yet been adopted. Henry IV. was himself driving
in one of these carriages when Ravaillac thrust his hand through the
window and struck the fatal blow.

The first coach with glass windows--“glass-coach,” as the new vehicle
was called when, many years later, it was introduced into England--was
seen in Paris in 1630, brought there from Brussels by the Prince de
Condé. Up to the middle of the seventeenth century no wheeled vehicles
were seen in the streets of Paris except those belonging to private
persons. In 1650, however, it occurred to a man named Sauvage, living in
an hotel in the Rue Saint-Martin, which bore the sign of “Saint-Fiacre,”
to let out horses and carriages to anyone who wanted them; and in time
the name of fiacre was given to all hired carriages. Soon afterwards,
about the middle of the seventeenth century, so-called “diligences” were
established for conveying “with diligence” passengers in common from one
part of France to another; and from the idea of conveying a number of
passengers in the same vehicle from town to town was derived that of the
omnibus, doing a like service within the walls of the capital. The
invention of the omnibus is attributed to Pascal, the author of so many
“Pensées” of a finer type. The original Parisian omnibus was called the
“five sous carriage”--“carrosse au cinq sous”--five sous being required
from each passenger. It held six persons, and carried as a distinctive
sign a lantern at the end of an iron pole, which was fixed on the top,
to the left of the driver.

Until the time of the Revolution the right of letting out carriages was
always made the subject of a privilege or concession, accorded to some
court favourite, male or female. After the Revolution, however, when all
privileges were abolished, those connected with the letting out of
public vehicles came to an end. A few years afterwards, in 1800, a
tariff regulating the prices payable to the drivers of hackney carriages
was drawn up, when, as now, the cost of a drive, or “course,” inside
Paris, was fixed at something above a franc, two francs being chargeable
per hour if the vehicle were hired by time. Originally private carriages
had now become public, so that at last a demand arose for carriages
which might be taken by the month, the week, the day, or the half-day.

Hitherto all the hackney vehicles of Paris had been of one pattern and
furnished with four wheels. They seated either two or four passengers,
and were drawn by one or two horses. In the year 1800 the two-wheeled
“cabriolet” was introduced, containing seats for two, one of which was
occupied by the driver, to whose intimate society the unfortunate
passenger was thus condemned. From this period until 1830 the public
vehicles of Paris were, according to a French writer, “a disgrace to the
capital.” They were drawn by ruined beasts which looked unlikely to
reach any given destination, and they were many of them good for nothing
but firewood.

The Paris hackney vehicle largely excited at this time the ridicule of
wits and song-writers, although, irrespectively of its condition, it has
always figured almost exclusively in literature. In a great city like
Paris the cab is the witness, the auxiliary, or the accomplice in nearly
every event which takes place--it is a mute confidant in most of the
scenes of human life. The song-writer, Desaugiers, has left in verse a
curious history of a cab, supposed to be written by itself, and in which
it relates how one day it conveyed a widow to the altar, another day a
husband to Chantilly without his wife, and a third day the wife to
Gros-Bois without her husband.

Coming to modern times, we find the driver of the fiacre as interesting
a personage as he must frequently find his fare to be. The question
whether, as is asserted, ruined aristocrats are at present earning their
bread as cab-drivers has already been discussed. But it is
unquestionable that many members of what are called the “better” classes
turn to the cab as their last resource, even as Dr. Johnson’s
“scoundrel” was said to turn to politics. Priests, devoid in two senses
of a living, bachelors of arts and sciences, old professors and worn-out