The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Amazing City, by John Frederick Macdonald

THE AMAZING CITY

LA FAISANE

Mais tous ces objets sont pauvres et moroses!

CHANTECLER

Moi, je n’en reviens pas du luxe de ces choses!

LA FAISANE

Tout est toujours pareil, pourtant!

CHANTECLER

Rien n’est pareil,

Jamais, sous le soleil, à cause du soleil!

Car Elle change tout!

LA FAISANE

Elle... Qui?

CHANTECLER

La lumière!...

LA FAISANE

Alors tout le secret de ton chant?...

CHANTECLER

C’est que j’ose

Avoir peur que sans moi, l’orient se repose!...

Je pense à la lumière et non pas à la gloire.

Chanter, c’est ma façon de me battre et de croire.

Et si de tous les chants le mien est le plus fier,

C’est que je chante clair, afin qu’il fasse clair.

Rostand: Chantecler.

THE
AMAZING CITY

BY
JOHN F. MACDONALD

AUTHOR OF
“PARIS OF THE PARISIANS”
“TWO TOWNS—ONE CITY” ETC.

LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS LTD.
ST MARTIN’S STREET
MDCCCCXVIII

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED
EDINBURGH

CONTENTS

PREFACE

This selection from the writings of the late John F. Macdonald—between 1907 and 1913—finds, naturally, and without any arbitrary arrangement, its unity of character, as the middle volume of the book, in three parts, that it was this author’s ruling desire—rather than his deliberate and predetermined purpose—to spend many years in writing. The first volume of this book was Paris of the Parisians, the last was the posthumous volume recently published, under the title of Two Towns—One City. In order to convey a clear idea of the motive and ruling method that give literary and spiritual unity to this long book in three volumes, which stands for the accomplished desire of a brief life, let me quote the author’s own account of this desire given in his Preface to Paris of the Parisians, where, at twenty years of age, he described himself as “a student of human life, still in his humanities”:

“The purpose of these sketches is not political nor yet didactic. No charge is laid upon me to teach the French nation its duties, to reprove it for its follies. Nor yet is it my design to hold up Paris of the Parisians as an example of naughtiness, nor even of virtue, to English readers. A student of human life still in my humanities, my purpose is purely interpretative. I would endeavour to translate into English some Paris scenes, in such a way as to give a true impression of the movement, personages, sounds, colours and atmosphere pervaded with joy of living which belongs to them. These impressions which I have myself received, and now desire to communicate, are not the result of a general survey of Paris taken from some lofty summit. I have not looked down upon the capital of France from the top of the Eiffel Tower; nor yet from the terrace of the Sacré Cœur; nor yet from the balcony among the chimères of Notre Dame; nor yet from Napoleon’s column on the Place Vendôme; nor yet from the Revolution’s monument that celebrates the taking of the Bastille. No doubt from these exalted places the town affords an amazing spectacle. Domes rise in the distance and steeples. Chimneys smoke; clouds hurry. Up there the spectator has not only a fine bird’s-eye view of beautiful Paris: he has a good throne for historical recollections, for philosophical reveries, for the development of political and scientific theories also. But for the student of to-day’s life, whose interest turns less to monuments than to men, there is this drawback—seen from this point of view the inhabitants of Paris look pigmies. Far below him they pass and repass: the bourgeois, the bohemian, the boulevardier, all small, all restless, all active, all so remote that one is not to be distinguished from the other. Coming down from his tower the philosopher may explore Paris from the tombs at St Denis to the crypts of the Panthéon, from the galleries of the Louvre to the shops in the Rue de Rivoli, from the Opera and Odéon to the Moulin Rouge and sham horrors of the cabarets of Montmartre—leaving Paris from the Gare du Nord he may look back at the white city under the blue sky with mingled regret and satisfaction—regret for the instructive days he has spent with her, satisfaction in that he knows her every stone; and yet, when some hours later in mid-Channel the coasts of France grow dim, he may leave behind him an undiscovered Paris—not monumental Paris, not political Paris, not Baedeker’s Paris, not profligate Paris, not fashionable cosmopolitan Paris of the Right Bank, not Bohemian Anglo-American Paris of the Left Bank, but Paris as she knows herself—Paris of the Parisians.

“Virtues of which the mere foreign spectator has no notion are to be found in Paris of the Parisians. And the Parisian does not conceal them through mauvaise honte. Love of Nature, love of children, both absorb him; how regularly does he hurry into the country to sprawl on the grass, lunch by a lake, stare at the sunset, the stars and the moon; how frequently he admires the view from his window, the Jardin du Luxembourg and the Seine; how invariably he spoils his gosse or another’s gosse, anybody’s gosse, infant, boy or girl! He will go to the Luxembourg merely to watch them. He likes to see them dig and make queer patterns in the dust. He loves to hear them laugh at guignol, and is officiously careful to see that they are securely strapped on to the wooden horses. He does not mind their hoops, and does not care a jot if their balls knock his best hat off. He walks proudly behind Jeanne and Edouard, on the day of their first Communion, all over Paris; laughing as Jeanne lifts her snow-white skirt and when Edouard, ætat. 10, salutes a friend; and he worships Jeanne, and thinks that there is no better son in the world than Edouard, and he will tell you so candidly and with earnestness over and over again. ‘Ma fille Jeanne,’ ‘Mon fils Edouard,’ ‘Mes deux gosses,’ is his favourite way of introducing the joy of his heart and the light of his home. And then he knows how to live amiably, and how to amuse himself pleasantly, and how to put poorer people at their ease, as on fête days. He will go to a State theatre on 14th July (when the performance is free) and joke with the crowd that waits patiently before its doors, and never push, and never complain, and never think of elbowing his way forward at the critical moment to get in. He will admire the fireworks and illuminations after, and dance at street corners without ever uttering a word that is rude or making a gesture that is rough. He will trifle with confetti on Mardi Gras, and throw coloured rolls of paper on to the boulevard trees. And he will laugh all the time and joke all the time, and make Jeanne happy and Edouard happy, and be happy himself, until it is time to abandon the boulevards and go home. ‘La joie de vivre!’ Verily, the Parisian studies, knows and appreciates it.

“There is something else he appreciates also, and reveres. And here especially we find that his paternal affection for all children, his courtesy and good-fellowship with all classes, his sense of proprietorship and delight and pride in public gardens do not indicate only a happy and amiable disposition, but spring from a deeper sentiment. He is sauntering on the boulevards, it may be, with Edouard. The time is summer—there is sunshine everywhere; the trees are in bloom, the streets are full of movement and noise, fiacres rattle, tram-horns sound, camelots cry, gamins whistle. Suddenly there is a temporary lull. A slow procession passes, a hearse buried in flowers; mourners on foot follow, the near relatives, bareheaded, walking two by two; after them come, it may be, a long line of carriages; it may be, one forlorn fiacre. It does not matter. For the Parisian, a rich funeral or a poor one is never an indifferent spectacle; never simply an unavoidable, disagreeable interruption of traffic, to be got out of sight, and out of the way of the busy world as quickly as possible. Here is one of those ordinary circumstances when the Parisian’s attention to the courtesies of social life is the outward and visible sign of his self-respecting humanity and fraternal sympathy. His hat is off, and held off—so is Edouard’s cap, so are the caps of even younger children, for from the age of four upwards each gosse knows what is due from him on such an occasion. Cochers are bareheaded, boulevard loafers also; the bourgeois stops stirring his absinthe to salute; many a woman crosses herself and mutters a prayer. ‘Farewell!’ ‘God bless thee!’ The kind and pious leave-taking of the Parisian enjoying to-day’s sunshine to the Parisian of yesterday whose place to-morrow will know him no more, accompanies the procession step by step on its way to the cemetery of Père Lachaise or Montparnasse....

“A kind critic of some of these sketches here reproduced from The Saturday Review has said of them that their tendency is to ‘counteract the wrong-headed reports of French and English antipathies by which two sympathetic neighbour-peoples are being estranged and exasperated.’ If this be true—and to some extent I hope it may be—the result is surely all the more gratifying because it does not proceed from any deliberate effort on my part to serve that end, but, as I have said, from my endeavour to convey to others the impressions I have received. The immortal Chadband may be said to have established the proposition that if a householder, having upon his rambles seen an eel, were to return home and say to the wife of his bosom, ‘Rejoice with me, I have seen an elephant,’ it would not be truth. It would not be truth were I to say of the Jeunesse of the Latin Quarter that it is callous and corrupt, or to deny that beneath the madcap, frolicsome temper of the hour can be felt the justness of mind and openness to great ideas that will put a curb on extravagance and give safe guidance by and by. And again of Paul and Pierre’s little lady friends, Mimi and Musette, mirth-loving, dance-loving daughters of Mürger—it would not be truth were I to report them in any sense wicked girls, or to deny that taking them where they stand their ways of feeling are straight though, no doubt, their way of life may go a little zigzag. And of Montmartre and her cabarets and chansonniers—it would not be truth were I to say that only madness and perversion reign in her cabarets, or to deny that true poets and genuine artists may be found amidst the false and hectic glitter of the ‘Butte.’ And of the man in the street who is neither poet nor student, the average Parisian of simply everyday life—it would not be truth were I to repeat the hackneyed phrase that he would overthrow the Republican Government to reinstate a Monarchy, being a Royalist at heart. True, storms rage about him; scandals break out beside him; ministries fall; presidents pass—did these storms and scandals represent Republican principles it might be said with truth that he paid them little heed. What is true, however, is that the qualities and principles he takes his stand by do not change or fall with ministries or pass with presidents: cultivating still the art of living amiably, rejoicing still over the beauties of his town, and not merely rejoicing over them, but respecting and protecting them, believing still, and with reason, in the greatness of his country, he succeeds where his rulers often fail, not merely in professing, but in practising the doctrine of liberty, equality, fraternity.”

The point of view from which the author of Paris of the Parisians in 1900 studied French life remained the same down to 1915, when he died. Nor did he ever change his interpretative methods into didactic or political ones. But it was inevitable that, as years passed, fresh knowledge and enlarged experience would come to the student of French life who, at twenty, sought to convey his impressions as he at that time received them. His impressions were not altered, nor, as a result of his increased knowledge of life, did he ever become himself less appreciative of the special virtues he discovered in the serious, as well as in the joyous, sides of the French art of living. On his own side, he remained to the end of his life (as so many of his friends testify) the same unworldly, joyous being, of profound and tender sympathies, impatient of all rules and systems save those that derive their authority from human kindness. But as a result of his inborn power of vision and gifts of observation and expression, his impressions became more lucid and were given greater force by the exceptional opportunities he enjoyed. During his residence in Paris, throughout the years when most of the essays in criticism contained in this volume were written, he was dramatic critic of French life and the French stage for The Fortnightly Review, and as Paris correspondent, given more or less a free hand by other leading periodicals to which he was a contributor; so that he could direct his attention to the study of many aspects of Parisian life not exclusively bounded by political interests.

Looking through the list of subjects dealt with in these chapters, it will be seen that the criticism of French life carried through by John F. Macdonald (if by “criticism” we understand what Matthew Arnold defined as “an impartial endeavour to see the thing as in itself it really is”) covered, from 1907 to 1913, nearly all events in every domain of Parisian life during this critical period.

In other words, the present volume supplies the evidence which not only confirms the impressions that he sought to convey to his fellow-countrymen in Paris of the Parisians, but it lends the authority that belongs to a judgment founded upon a right criticism to the sentence which I may, in conclusion, quote from his article on the “Paris of To-day,” originally published in The Fortnightly Review, July, 1915, and reprinted (by the editor’s kind permission) in his posthumous book, Two Towns—One City.

“It has been repeatedly and persistently asserted, in hastily written articles and books, that the war has created an entirely ‘new’ Paris. Journalists and novelists have proclaimed themselves astonished at the ‘calm’ and the ‘seriousness’ of the Parisians, and at the ‘composed’ and ‘solemn’ aspect of every street, corner and stone in the city; and how elaborately, how melodramatically have they expatiated upon the abolition of absinthe, the closing of night-restaurants, the disappearance of elegant dresses, the silence of the Apaches, the hush in the demi-monde, and the increased congregations in the churches!

“‘A new, reformed Paris,’ our critics reiterate. ‘The flippancy has vanished, the danger of decadence has passed—and in place of extravagance and hilarity we find economy, earnestness and dignity.’

“Now, with these hastily conceived reflections and criticisms I beg leave to disagree. It is not a ‘new’ Paris that one beholds to-day, but precisely the very Paris one would expect to see. No city, at heart, is more serious, more earnest, more alive to ideas and ideals: no other capital in the world works so hard, creates so much, feels so deeply, labours and battles so incessantly and so consistently for the supreme cause of liberty, justice and humanity. Crises, and shocks, and scandals, if you like—but what generous reparations, what glorious recoveries! Stifling cabarets, lurid restaurants, rouge, and patchouli, and startling deshabille, if you please; but all those dissipations were provided for the particular pleasure and well-filled purses of Messieurs les Étrangers—at least twenty foreigners to one Frenchman on the hectic hill of Montmartre; and what a babel of English and American voices chez Maxim, until five or six in the morning, when the average Parisian was peacefully enjoying his last hour’s sleep! The statues and monuments of Paris, the free Sorbonne University, the quays of the Seine with their bookstalls, the incomparable Comédie Française, the stately French Academy, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Panthéon (with its noble motto: ‘Aux Grands Hommes, la Patrie Reconnaissante’), the Arc de Triomphe, Notre-Dame; do these (and innumerable other) illustrious institutions, so cherished by the Parisians, appear compatible with ‘flippancy,’ ‘incoherency’ and ‘the danger of decadence’? And the profound, ardent patriotism of the Parisians—how else could it have manifested itself save in the noble, supreme spectacle of courage, determination and self-sacrifice which we are witnessing to-day? No; it is not a ‘new’ Paris, but the very Paris one expected to see; hushed but proud; stricken yet self-confident; wounded, even stabbed to the heart after eleven months of war—but heroic, indomitable”—the Amazing City—the worthy capital of, as Mr Kipling says,

“the Land beloved by every soul that loves and serves its kind.”

Before closing my preface to this Selection from the sketches, essays and criticisms of Paris life, under its picturesque, popular, literary and social aspects that represents John F. Macdonald’s interpretation of the spirit of the “Amazing City,” between 1907 and 1914, I have to acknowledge the kindness of the several Editors, to whom these different articles were originally addressed; and who have allowed me to reprint them in the present volume. The Roué, In a Cellar, and The Affair of the Collars, appeared originally in The Morning Post. The three articles, On Strike, the two pictures of the historical Pension de Famille in the Rue des Poitevins (haunted by the memory of Gambetta), and of the other Pension de Famille in the Shadow of St Sulpice, saddened by the memory of the pathetic story of the gentle and pious old maids who died broken-hearted, as victims of the Rochette swindle, appeared in The Morning Leader, in the days before its association with The Daily News. The series of short sketches of French Presidents and Leading Statesmen, and Personalities, who have helped to make, and are still living influences in, French politics, were contributed, later, to The Daily News and Morning Leader. I have to thank the Editor of The Contemporary Review for consenting to the reprinting of the articles upon Henri Rochefort and Royal Visits to Paris; and the Editor of The Fortnightly Review for allowing me to reproduce from the series of articles on French Life and the French Stage, which appeared in this Review during several years, three special criticisms, illustrative of the typical French national “virtue,”—a fundamental understanding of the essential duty of man to be an intelligent and kindly human being—applied to the correction and sweetening of faulty rules of “Bohemian” morality and bourgeois respectability; and lending high ideals to what is generally described as the “realistic” spirit of the modern French drama. The articles descriptive of life in the Latin Quarter appeared originally in The Saturday Review.

Frederika Macdonald.

February 1918.

I
IN THE STREET

In my almost daily perambulations through the brilliant, through the drab, and through the ambiguous quarters of Paris, I constantly come upon street scenes that bring me inquisitively to a standstill. Not that they are particularly novel or startling. Indeed, to the Parisian they are such banal, everyday spectacles that he passes them by without so much as a glance. But for me, familiar though I am with the physiognomy of the Amazing City, these street scenes, amusing or pathetic, sentimental or grim, possess an indefinable, a never-failing charm.

For instance, I dote on a certain ragged, weather-beaten old fellow who is always and always to be discovered, on a boulevard bench, under a dim gas-lamp, at the precise hour of eleven. Across his knees—unfolded—a newspaper. And spread forth on the newspaper, scores and scores of cigarette ends and cigar stumps, which have been industriously amassed in the streets, and on the terraces of cafés, during the day. Every night, on this same boulevard bench, at the same hour of eleven, the old fellow counteth up his spoil.

“Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven,” he mutters.

“Eh bien, le vieux, how are affairs?” asks a policeman. But the old fellow, bent in half over the newspaper, hears him not. When—O joy!—he comes upon a particularly fine bit of cigar, he holds it up to the gas-lamp, measures it closely with his eye, then packs it carefully away in his waistcoat pocket. But when—O gloom!—he has a long run of bad luck in the way of wretched, almost tobaccoless cigarette ends, he breaks out into guttural expressions of indignation and disgust.

The night wears on. Up go the shutters of the little wine-shop opposite. Rarely a passer-by. Scarcely a sound.

“One hundred and two. One hundred and three. One hundred and four,” counts the weather-beaten old fellow under the gas-lamp.

Then, the street singers of Paris, with harmonium, violin and a bundle of tender, sentimental songs. Four of them, as a rule; four men in jerseys, scarlet waistbands and blue corduroy trousers. They, too, come out particularly at night and establish themselves under a gas-lamp. And all around them stand charming, bareheaded girls from the neighbouring blanchisseries and milliners’ shops; and the adorers of those maidens—young, amorous MM. Georges, Ernest and Henri—from the grocer’s, the butcher’s, the printer’s; and workmen and charwomen and concierges; and probably a cabman or two, and most likely a soldier, a lamp-lighter, a policeman.

“Love is Always in Season, the latest and greatest of valse-songs, created by the incomparable Mayol,” announces the vocalist. A chord from the harmonium and violin, and the singer, in a not unmelodious voice, proceeds to assure us that “though the snow may fall, or the skies may frown, or the seas may roar, Love, sweet love, is Always in Season.”

General applause. Cries of “C’est chic, ça” from the charming, bareheaded girls. Sighs and sentimental glances from their faithful adorers.

“Buy Love is Always in Season. Only two sous, only two sous! The Greatest, the most Exquisite valse-song of the day,” cries the vocalist, holding up copies of the song. “Buy it at once, and we will sing it all together.”

At least twenty copies are sold. “Attention,” cries the vocalist. And then, under the gas-lamp, what a spectacle and what song! Everyone sings; yes, even this huge, apoplectic cabman: “Though the snow may fall....” Everyone sings: the soldier, the workmen, the decrepit old charwomen: “Though the skies may frown....” Everyone sings: the very policeman’s lips are moving. And how the charming, bareheaded girls sing and sing; and how amorously, how passionately do their adorers raise their voices: “Though the seas may roar.... What matter, what matter!... Since love, sweet love, is always in season!”

Of course children, with their lively, irresponsible games, provide delightful street scenes. No piano-organs, alas! to which they may dance. We have but three or four piano-organs in Paris, and these play only in elegant quarters, for the pleasure of portly, solemn butlers. However, the children hold theatrical performances on the pavement, which, if animated and dramatic, are scarcely convincing; indeed they must be pronounced bewildering, chaotic. René, aged six, proclaims himself Napoleon; Jeanne, his sister, declares herself Sarah Bernhardt; André strangely states that he is an Aeroplane; others most incoherently become a Horse, the President of the Republic, Aunt Berthe, a Steamer on the Seine, the Dog at the neighbouring chemist’s, and (this, a favourite, amazing rôle) the Eiffel Tower! Then, when the parts have been duly selected, after no end of wrangling, then, the play! Much extraordinary dialogue between Napoleon and the divine Sarah; more between the Eiffel Tower and the President of the Republic; still more between the Aeroplane, the Seine Steamer and Aunt Berthe. And then dancing and singing and skipping and——

Well, at once the most irresponsible and irresistible street scene in Paris. Or, at least, second only in irresponsibility to the fêtes of Mardi Gras and Mi-Carême.

Year after year, the cynic is to be heard declaring that confetti has “gone out” and that no one really rejoices at carnival time; but year after year, when Mardi Gras and Mi-Carême come round, confetti flies swiftly and thickly and gaily in Paris, and only a rare, elegant boulevardier, or some dull, heavy bourgeois remains indifferent to the excitement of the scene.

Confetti, in fact, everywhere! Already at nine o’clock this morning—blithe morning of Mardi Gras—it has got on to my staircase, and from thence into the dining-room and on to the breakfast-table. Suddenly, confetti in my coffee. A moment later, confetti on the butter. And when I unfold the newspapers, a shower of confetti.

“It is extraordinary,” I murmur to the servant.

“Most certainly, confetti is extraordinary,” she assents. “It goes where it pleases; it does what it likes; it respects nobody and nothing—impossible to stop it.”

“And only nine o’clock in the morning,” I remark, removing a new speck of confetti from the butter.

“At seven o’clock, when I went to Mass, it had got into the church,” relates my servant. “It was also in the sacristy when I went to see M. le Curé. Truly, it is the most astonishing thing in the world; and yet it is only a little bit of coloured paper.”

As time wears on the tradesmen’s assistants bring more confetti into the house. Somehow or other it enters my boots, and finds a resting-place in my pockets. At luncheon, lots of confetti. At dinner, pink, green, yellow, orange and purple confetti with every course. And when at eight o’clock I set forth to view the rejoicings on the Grands Boulevards, my servant, leaning over the banisters, impudently pelts me with confetti.

A cold night and occasionally a shower—but the boulevards are thronged with I don’t know how many thousands of Parisians. Here, there and everywhere electrical advertising signs dance and blink dizzily. Each café is brilliantly illuminated. More pale, fierce light from the street lamps. And, heavens! what a din of voices, and whistles, and musical instruments!

“Who is without confetti? Who is without confetti?” shout scores of men, women and children, holding up long, bulky paper bags, supposed to contain two pounds of the bright-coloured stuff. And the bags sell and sell. And the little rounds of paper fly and fly. And down they fall in their hundreds of thousands on to the ground, making it a soft, agreeable carpet of confetti.

Of course, no traffic. In the midst of the crowd groups of policemen; and the policemen are pelted, and the policemen must shake confetti out of eyes, and beards, and ears, and moustaches. However, they are amiable; and, indeed, everyone is good-tempered. No rudeness and no roughness. Here is Edouard, aged eight, in the crowd—dressed as a soldier, with a wooden gun and a paper helmet. There is Yvonne, aged seven, in the throng—all in white, with a wand tied at the top with a huge creamy bow. And Edouard and Yvonne are perfectly safe. And that old married couple—plainly from the provinces—are entirely safe. And——

A splash of confetti in my face. Then, a deluge of confetti over my hat. And I am pleased, and I am flattered; for my assailant is an English girl, with blue eyes, and gold hair, and an incomparable complexion.

Despite the cold, every seat and every table on the terraces of the cafés are occupied. Past the terraces surges the crowd, casting confetti at the glasses of beer, coffee and liqueurs, which the consumers have carefully covered over with saucers. But, always unconquerable, the confetti enters the glasses; and thus one drinketh benedictine à la confetti, and chartreuse à la confetti, and——

“Who wants a nose? Who wants a nose?” shouts a hawker, holding up a collection of long, vivid red noses. And the red noses are bought; and so, too, are false beards and moustaches, and artificial eyebrows, and huge cardboard ears.

Then, what costumes in the crowd! Of course, any number of pierrots and clowns, who gesticulate and grimace; and ladies in dominoes, and men in heavy scarlet mantles and black masks. Over there, an Arab; here, a Greek soldier in the Albanian kilt—the picturesque “fustanella.” And confetti—red, blue, yellow, green, white, orange, purple—sprinkled over, and clinging to, all these different costumes, and flying above them and all around them, a fantastic spectacle!

Confetti, again, in the fur coats of chauffeurs; a whirl of it—bright yellow—around three colossal negroes from darkest Africa; and a fierce battle of it, waged by an admiring Parisian against two fascinating young ladies from New York. Darkest Africa grins, displaying glistening white teeth. New York utters shrill little cries. And Motordom—represented by the three chauffeurs—imitates the many savage sounds emitted by 60-horse-power machines.

“Your health!” cries a clown, plunging a handful of confetti into a glass which, for only a second or two, has remained uncovered.

“Vive la Vie! Vive la Vie!” shout a procession of students from the Latin Quarter.

“Who is without Confetti? Who wants a nose? Who desires a moustache?” yell the hawkers.

And now, rain. Down it comes, finely, steadily, soddening the carpet of confetti, spotting the fantastic costumes, scattering the crowd. Edouard (in his paper helmet) and Yvonne (with her wand) are hurried along homewards—much against their will—by their parents; the hawkers disappear with the remaining paper bags; the dizzy advertising signs give a last blink and go out; the policemen congregate beneath the street lamps and in doorways—the carnival is over.

However, memories remain, and these memories are—confetti.

It has flown, but it has not gone. Every hour of every day, for many a week, it will turn up in one’s home, in one’s clothing, at one’s meals... still bold, vivid, ungovernable, unconquerable....

And now, after colour and gaiety—ambiguity, gloom. Away to remote, neglected corners of Paris; to the terrain vague—the waste ground—of the Amazing City, which, this particular afternoon, lies steeped in a damp fog, and strewn with sodden newspapers and broken bottles, and pots and pans without handles, hats without brims, and battered old shoes. On the waste, prowling about amidst the wreckage, a gaunt, vagabond cat. Gathering together odds and ends, the aged, bent chiffonnière—a hag of a woman, half demented, with fingers like claws, that go scraping and digging about in the refuse. Then three ragged children—skeletons almost—also interested in the rubbish, who are savagely snarled at by the chiffonnière when they approach her preserves. Fog, damp and puddles. Mounds of overturned earth, subsidences, crevices. A rusty engine lying disabled on its side. Quantities of coarse, savage thistles. Gloom unrelieved. The chiffonnière and the ragged children becoming more and more ghostly and ghastly in the half-light. The kind of scene depicted so tragically by the great-hearted Steinlen, and sung of so despairingly by the humane poet, Rictus. Sung of, too, by lesser poets than the author of the Soliloque d’un Pauvre. For terrain vague is a favourite theme with the chansonniers of Montmartre, and in their songs they are fond of describing how they have passed from comfortable, bourgeois neighbourhoods on to “waste ground.” The bourgeois was dozing in his chair; Madame la Bourgeoise was knitting a hideous woollen shawl; Mademoiselles the three daughters were respectively tinkling away at the piano, pasting picture cards into an album, absorbing a sickly novel. As a heartrending, an overwhelming contrast, behold—after the snugness of the bourgeoisie—the wretchedness, the misère noire of the human phantoms poking about on the waste ground!

“Would that I had a bourgeois here on this terrain vague; a bourgeois I might terrify and harrow!” declaim the realistic chansonniers of the Montmartre cabarets. “‘Bourgeois,’ I would cry, ‘what do you see? Bourgeois, look well, look again, look always. Bourgeois, do you understand? It is well, wretched, cowardly Bourgeois—you tremble!’”

No less attracted by terrain vague are the frail, wistful poets of Paris, the poets (as they have been so admirably denominated) of “mists and half-moons, dead leaves and lost illusions.” On to the waste they bring Pierrot, their favourite, eternal hero. Midnight has long struck. A half-moon casts silvery shafts on to the wreckage—and on to Pierrot, who, as he stands there forlornly amidst the debris, proceeds to disclose the secret: “Pourquoi sont pâles les Pierrots....” Only the cheeks of the vulgar are rosy; for the vulgar cannot feel. But the artist is stung day after day by ironies, cruelties, bitter awakenings—and so is frail, and so is pale. How he suffers, how tragically is he disillusioned! There was a blonde... but she was capricious. There was a brune... but she, too, was fickle. There was a rousse, an auburn-haired goddess... but alas! she also was false. And Pierrot sobs. And Pierrot goes on his knees to the half-moon. And Pierrot prays. And suddenly a radiant figure appears on the waste ground, and a sweet, melodious voice murmurs: “Why sigh for the blonde? Why grieve for the brune? Why weep for the rousse? Am I not enough?” And Pierrot, looking up with his pale, tear-stained face, beholds his Muse, smiling down upon him—

“Sur ce terrain va—aa—gue.”

Farther away—away, this time, to one of the environs of Paris, and down there, by the river-side, the annual fête. Not an empty corner, not a vacant space; nothing but booths, “side-shows,” shooting-galleries, roundabouts, caravans—“all the fun of the fair.” Confusion, exhilaration, and a hundred different, frenzied sounds. All this babel lasts a week; but at the end of the week, departure and gloom. Gone the caravans and their picturesque inmates. Gone the “distractions.” There stood the shooting-gallery, with its targets, grotesque dummies and strings of clay pipes. One fired twice for a penny. If successful, one was rewarded with paper flowers, or a shocking cigar, or (in exceptional cases) a strident alarm clock; if a bad marksman, one was consoled with a slice of hard, gritty ginger-bread. Farther on revolved the roundabout. One rode a rickety steed, with only one stirrup. One turned to the accompaniment of a husky, exhausted old organ. What appalling liberties it took with the Valse Bleue! Next, one visited the palmist, inspected a seedy lion, stared at optical illusions, shook hands with a dwarf, bought sticks of nougat, rode again on the round about, returned to——

But all over now, and nothing but memories and souvenirs about: broken clay pipes, splinters of bottles and wood, shavings, scraps of cloth, hand-bills and rusty, bent nails, the eternal old battered hat, the equally inevitable old boot, and a hoof or two from the rickety horses that revolved to the haunting tune of the Valse Bleue.

The usual mounds of refuse. Also, the turf damaged with ruts, and burnt away in places by the fair people’s fires. The annual fête over, not a soul but myself loiters on this portion of the Seine river-bank. Only gloom and desolation. Nothing but waste. Again, terrain vague.

II
IN A CELLAR

Bright things and sombre things, tarnished things and threadbare things, frail things, fast-fading things; things and things, and all of them old things.... The past in this cellar; in every nook and corner of it—the past. Come here through a hole in the wall of a narrow, cobbled Paris street—come down a number of crooked stone steps—I now look curiously about me, and wonder what to do next. No one challenges me: the cellar appears to be uninhabited. Yet above its crude, primitive entrance, on a weather-beaten board, I discern the name—Veuve Mollard.

An autumnal mist filled the street outside; and the mist, pouring through the hole in the wall, has invaded the cellar and made it chilly and ghostly. It is a rambling, chaotic place—suggestive of three or four cellars having been thrown into one; for it twists and it turns, and it bulges and recedes, and it slopes and ascends; and the grimy brick ceiling—lofty enough at the entrance—suddenly dips towards the middle, and almost precipitates itself to the ground at the far end. Here and there an unshaded lamp, of the kitchen description, burns dimly. On a stool I perceive a workbox, crowded with sewing materials—but not a sign, not a sound of “Widow” Mollard. I cough loudly. I advance farther into the cellar. And, as I advance, I pass bright things and sombre things, tarnished things and threadbare things, frail things, fast-fading——

“Monsieur?”

An apparition, a spectre! There, in the background, appears a tall, gaunt woman, with a pale, wrinkled face, large, luminous dark eyes and tumbled white hair. In the dim light from the lamps Veuve Mollard looks a hundred years old. There she stands, old and alone, in a rambling old cellar, amidst old, discarded things.

“Monsieur?”

A deep, even a sepulchral voice—and then from myself an explanation. I should like to examine the old things—all of them, not knowing myself what I want. I have a fancy for old things; like to wonder over them; like, O most respectfully, to handle them. No; unnecessary to turn up the lamps; they give, just as they are, the very light for old things. “Faîtes donc, faîtes donc,” assents the deep voice. Retiring to a corner, Widow Mollard seats herself on a stool and proceeds to darn a rent in a faded yellow velvet curtain.

Silence in the cellar. Shadows, ambiguities, and the mist from the street.

Against the walls, boards have been laid on the floor; and heaped on the boards are tapestries, draperies, all kinds of stuffs. Then, tables, wooden trays, and flat, open receptacles of wicker-work. Also pegs, for gowns. Again, battered, lidless boxes of odds and ends. Thus, embarras de choix: which of the old things shall I examine first? At last I decide on the tapestries. They are of all shapes and sizes, but most of them have been severed, are but parts—no head to this horse, no top to the lance of this knight, and of that saint only the half. Next, a circular piece of tapestry representing what might be a throne—but faded, faded; and the figure on the throne as shadowy as a phantom. Gobelins? Veuve Mollard no doubt knows: but I prefer to pursue my researches alone, unaided; and then the gaunt widow is darning and darning away at the yellow velvet curtain.... Whose velvet curtain? Where has it hung, what fine window has it screened? Once, evidently, a rich, magnificent yellow; now faded, crumpled, damaged. A curtain from the Faubourg St Germain? from a ruined château? even from the palaces of Versailles or Fontainebleau? Again I glance at Widow Mollard. Old, old. Her fingers tremble, and a long lock of white hair has fallen over one pale, wrinkled cheek.

Out of this tray a snuff-box, enamelled, oval-shaped and delicate. A Watteau peasant girl on the lid—but the pretty, pink-cheeked girl, fast fading. Whose snuff-box? Then a shoe buckle. Whose massive, old-fashioned silver buckle? And of whom this miniature: blue eyes, sensitive mouth, delicate eyebrows and powdered hair? Then, a tiny Sèvres tea-cup; a gilt key; a chased silver book-clasp; a string of coral; an ornament of amethysts; bits of embroidery; stray pieces of velvet and silk; lace, satins, furs, and spangled and soft and transparent stuffs. Whose finery? Perhaps a débutante’s, a débutante of years ago—now old, like the things.

Graceful, charming débutante of the past! Behold her dressing—or rather being dressed—for her first, her very first ball, amidst what excitement, what confusion! Her mother on her knees, the maids also on their knees, putting the last touches; and the débutante turned round and round, and exhorted to keep still, and told to walk a little, and ordered to return, and commanded to remain “there,” and not to move, not to move! Radiant, irresistible débutante of long ago. At once dignified and shy, now flushed and now pale when in the ballroom she made her first bow to the world, received her first compliments, achieved her first triumphs, and experienced, no doubt, her first emotions, her first illusions, her first doubts. Here in this cellar, in the half-light and the mist from the street, here lies her first ball-dress; and here too, perhaps, are the shoes in which she danced her first official waltz, her first real cotillon—a pair of small satin shoes which repose on the top of a heap of other frail shoes.

Long, narrow shoes, tiny ridiculous shoes—some of them with loose, dangling rosettes, others showing a bare place where the rosette or a jewel had once been fastened. High heels, and the soles scarcely thicker than a sheet of paper. Sometimes a rent in the satin, and the maker’s name stamped in dim gilt letters. Shoes, no doubt, that long ago stepped daring quadrilles at the bal masqué of the Opera; the shoes of Mademoiselle Liane de Luneville, a former blonde and brilliant courtesan; and next to them remnants from Mademoiselle de Luneville’s wardrobe. A white satin dress, sewn with artificial pearls, dismembered silken sleeves, spangled stuffs, daring gauzes, and other extravagances and audacities. Courtesan finery. Sold, no doubt, in the twilight of the demi-mondaine’s career; or seized roughly by the bailiffs when not a shadow of the beauty or glory of Mademoiselle de Luneville remained.

Now does a moth fly out of a piece of tapestry I have shaken. Now do I behold a black cat, with lurid yellow eyes, perched motionless upon a pile of draperies in a corner. Now do I perceive gigantic cobwebs overhead. Thus, some life—but life of an eerie nature—in the cellar.

“Je ne vous dérange pas, Madame?”

“Faîtes donc, faîtes donc,” replies the deep, sepulchral voice of Veuve Mollard.

A cracked water-colour landscape signed, ever so faintly, “R. E. F.” Disposed of, perhaps, for a five-franc piece; and to-day the painter either dead, or a shabby, lonely, struggling old fellow? or a rich and distinguished “master”? A sword—used in a duel? A small silver mug—from a god-father? Pink, white and black dominoes: they should have been placed amongst the courtesan’s finery. The bâton of a chef d’orchestre, silver-mounted, of ebony. A bunch of tarnished seals; chipped vases and liqueur glasses; a cracked, frameless mirror; a collection of old legal and medical books; a heap of dusty, fantastic draperies of the kind used extensively by the students of the Latin Quarter. Deceptive draperies that once turned a bed into a divan, discreet draperies that hid the scars on the walls—the draperies of Paul and Pierre, of Gaston and René, sons of Henri Mürger, genuine, veritable Bohemians, who, if they lived recklessly and irresponsibly, were nevertheless full of generous impulses, imagination, ideals, but who to-day are become stout, bourgeois, double-chinned inhabitants of such dreary provincial towns as Abbeville and Arras.

Thus the past in this cellar; in every nook and corner of this rambling, chaotic cellar, the past. Changes and changes—but not one change for the better. All around me evidence of somebody’s indifference and faithlessness to old possessions. On all sides, symbols of somebody’s downfall and ruin.

“Je vous remercie, Madame.”

“C’est moi qui vous remercie, Monsieur.”

On my way out—on the crooked stone staircase leading upwards to the hole in the wall—I look back.

And down there, in the dim light from the lamps, the gaunt, white-haired woman darns away at the faded velvet curtain. Down there, from its throne of draperies, the black cat watches the widow with lurid yellow eyes. Down there in vague disorder—in an atmosphere of shadows and ambiguities, of moth, cobweb and mist—down there, lie bright things and sombre things, tarnished things and threadbare things, frail things, fast-fading things; things and things, and all of them old, discarded, forgotten things.

III
IN A MARKET-PLACE

The market!... We holiday-keepers in Moret-sur-Loing have been looking forward to it, imagining it, scanning the spot where it is held, recalling other French market-places, ever since we first bowed before the amiable patron and patronne of our hotel. Our immediate inquiry was when is the market. “Tell us,” we cried, “when we, like the villagers, may go forth in our newest clothes, in high spirits, as though to some fine ceremony, to view fruits and vegetables, gigots and rôtis if we like, stalls of chiffons and trinkets, patent medicines, soaps, scents and——”

“A week hence, mon pauvre Monsieur,” interrupted the patronne. “The market takes place on Tuesdays only: as it is Tuesday night, you have just missed it.”

“Then,” we replied, “the week will be empty, sombre; the week will be a year, a century; but for you, Madame, and your admirable hotel, the week would be intolerable.” And the patronne bowed and smiled; we bowed and smiled, “comme dans le monde,” in fact, “en mondains.” Never was there sweeter smiling, better bowing, in Moret....

Moret at the Market.—The time of day differs in Moret-sur-Loing; differs, also, in neighbouring villages. For miles around, the clocks strike independently, instead of in chorus, so that it is ten at the station, when it is ten minutes to, in our hotel; a quarter to ten, inside the local bijoutier’s—but all hours within. When these clocks have done striking, the church clock starts; there is no corroboration, no unanimity. However... who cares, who worries? It is “almost” eleven; “about” twelve; a “little past” four; that suffices. We are late, or we are early. We get accustomed to being strangely in three places at the very same hour. Should a friend be pressed we can say: “That clock is fast”; if he weary us, we need not hesitate to declare it slow. And watches vary; time is of no moment, in Moret. Farther still from Fontainebleau, in the village of Grez, the two or three hundred inhabitants rely chiefly on the Curé for the hour. He alone controls the church clock; but he, an irascible old gentleman, often quarrels with the Mayor: and on these occasions stops the clock immediately, revengefully. Once the quarrel lasted three whole months: for three whole months the hands of the clock remained stationary. The Mayor protested: but the Curé ignored him. When at last the Mayor withdrew his objection to the point at issue, the Curé allowed the clock to go again. And now, if ever the Mayor and the Curé disagree, the Curé stops the clock, the Mayor protests, the Curé ignores him: and Grez has no church clock to tell the time until the unhappy Mayor gives in.

Fortunately for us in Moret, the Mayor and Curé are friends. We depend more or less on the Curé’s clock—most dilapidated of dials—whose solemn summons at ten on Sunday bids us attend High Mass; whose brisker chimes at the same hour on Tuesday set us hastening towards the market. Indeed, in our hotel, disdainful of its dubious timepiece, we wait for the ten strokes and after counting them join the villagers outside: knots of villagers, rows of villagers, solitary villagers, but all of them fresh, immaculate. Each woman wears a print dress, or a print skirt and camisole, a spotted handkerchief tied in a knot at the top of her head. Each man has drawn on a clean cotton shirt and his newest coat, or a blouse; his tie invariably is bright. Each girl is clad lightly, charmingly, and has becomingly arranged her hair. As for us... well, we do not seem shabby beside a painter, a Parisian in “le boating” costume: our scarf is as silken as theirs, our waistcoat is equally white and piqué, but our cane is undoubtedly handsomer, and we think we dangle it more elegantly.

Over the cobble-stones, avoiding the ruisseau, we go—smoking and chatting—the peasants swinging their baskets, the girls giving a last touch to their hair—an amazing spectacle.

At the end of the narrow street—the “Grande Rue,” no less!—is installed the first market-woman, with a vast basket of vegetables. And she, a wizened old thing, wrinkled and bent in half, appears to be reflecting over her poor potatoes, her shabby cauliflowers. Still, she refuses to bargain. She has but one price, and she sniffs when a would-be customer turns over her wares, inspecting them; and sniffs again when she is told that they are “bien médiocres et bien chères.” So she sells nothing: falls into reflection again, quite forgets the would-be customer, who, turning up the next street, faces a double row of market-people established on either kerbstone, and thus comes upon the chiefest commerce.

All Moret is present, all Moret is bargaining and buying, and all the market-people are seamed with wrinkles, browned, bent; and all of them wear blouses or camisoles or print dresses, handkerchiefs or peaked caps—old, old people all of them; at all events seemingly old; weather-beaten, of the earth. Each has his or her basket, so that there are two uninterrupted lines of baskets, of little piles of paper, of measuring utensils. Every vegetable is available, every fruit. There is crying, croaking, quarrelling; there is laughter, the chink of sous. Above the din one hears:

“Trois sous, Madame.”

“Non, Madame, deux sous.”

And: “Regardez ces raisins.”

“Voyez, voyez, les melons.”

And always: “Cinq sous, Madame.”

“Non, Madame, trois sous.... Sous, sous, sous.”

Slowly we progress, meet the patronne of our hotel, the postman, the garde champêtre, the barber and, all of a sudden, a bevy of fair Americans, daintily dressed, who inhabit a “finishing” school near by. In the village it is hinted that they are heiresses, all of them. Certainly their clothes are rich, but they carry paper bags of grapes, and eat the grapes, and dawdle... just like Mesdemoiselles Jeanne and Marie, village girls who “do washing” on the river bank every other day of the week. Also, they utter little cries:

“Isn’t that old woman the funniest thing that’s ever happened!”

And: “My! Isn’t it all too quaint!”

Here a foreigner sketches. Farther on, by the side of the church, a painter has established his easel; next him, stands a group of village women who have already done their shopping and bear their spoil. And they compare their purchases, gesticulating over this cauliflower, that salad; and soon we hear much about a certain Madame Morin who has gone home furious because Madame Petilleau carried off an amazing melon she had her eye on... just by a minute. But Madame Morin is always like that; Madame Morin would flush, lose her temper, over a single bean.

Now stalls rise—stalls of ribbons and jewellery, stalls of cheeses, stalls of sheets, curtains, all stuffs. And the stuffs are held up to the sun and considered in the shade, and compared with a complexion and wound round a waist, so that we hear:

“Ça vous va bien.”

And: “Je trouve que c’est trop clair.”

And, of course: “Trois francs, Madame.”

“No, Madame, deux francs... francs, francs, francs.”

Baskets become veritable burdens. Gesticulations grow wilder, the cries louder, the exchange of francs and sous quicker and quicker. Everyone has vegetables and fruits; many have coloured stuffs.

To and fro go the patronne of our hotel, the postman, the garde champêtre, the barber, the Americans. To and fro go the village girls—but pause all at once before a ragged fellow whose eyes are crossed, whose face is unshaven, whose dirty hands clasp an accordion. The church clock strikes eleven. But above all these sounds rises suddenly and discordantly the voice of the man with the accordion. As he sings he leers. The village girls titter. To them, impudently and grotesquely, he addresses his eternal refrain:

“Tu sais bien que je t’ai-ai-me.”

Still we linger; soon we admire a group of women and children whose home is on the barges of the river bank. Barefoot, with shining black eyes and black hair, bright shawls and handkerchiefs, they add to the picturesqueness of the spectacle as they wander to and fro with wicker-work wares. A graceful English girl presents the children with grapes, and the children smile, displaying the whitest teeth. The women pounce upon stray slips of salad, broken atoms of cauliflower, and are watched suspiciously by the market-people. The foreigner sketches them; the painter evidently intends to include them in his scene—and we, also fascinated, would follow them, were we not tempted to listen to a noisy fellow who, flourishing a scrap of soap, boasts that it will blot out every stain.

How simple, how easy is it to stain your coat, he cries; then proceeds to point out stains on various coats. Fear not, however. Be not cast down. He is here, he, the enemy of stains—he with “The Miraculous Tablet.”

And the “Miraculous Tablet” is held on high and flourished to and fro, ready to render old clothes new, and soiled hats fresh, in exchange for two vulgar sous.

“Seize this surprising opportunity,” shouts the man. “Take out your stains, all of you. The Miraculous Tablet will away with them all... except stains on your conscience. I swear it, and I am honest.”

And then, continuing, he announces that the “Miraculous Tablet” has made him famous throughout the land; that clients return to him in thousands to express their gratitude; that a certain mother once shed tears of joy when he took an ink-stain out of her little boy’s white suit; that only yesterday, in Orleans, the inhabitants cheered and cheered him and, rushing forward, begged leave to shake his hand. “And,” he concludes, “believe me, ladies and gentlemen, I had not hands enough.”

Suddenly a tambourine sounds, and up the street come a man and a woman with a dancing bear, another woman with a monkey. The monkey screams, the bear on its hind legs bobs up and down, up and down, and the man encourages him gruffly and the woman shakes the tambourine.

Of course a crowd assembles, and of course cries go up. Cries rise everywhere: from the market-place, from the crowd, from the enemy of stains, from the man with the accordion, from the group around the bear; all cries, the strangest cries, all languages also—English, French, many a patois, “bargee,” the unknown tongue of the almost black people with the bear—and all accents.

Then several nuns issue forth from church and pause for a moment. The Curé appears. A “Savoyard” with statues—as white as his statues, for his clothes are white and his face is covered with chalk-dust—approaches. And all these different people, in all their different costumes, with different accents and different gestures, mingle together, elbow one another, and all around them are the stalls of bright stuffs, the vast baskets of vegetables and fresh fruits. In the background—grey and quaint—stands the church.

However, time is flying and luncheon hour is near. The purchases have to be borne home, washed, prepared, and so the inhabitants of Moret raise their baskets, exchange adieux. Off starts the patronne of our hotel; off go the postman, the garde champêtre, the barber and the fair Americans—still eating grapes—to their “finishing” school. The village girls disperse, and here and there the market-people are already dislodging their baskets, counting up sous. Once again we hear of the hot-tempered Madame Morin, the triumphant Madame Petilleau. Other familiar sounds reach us as we near the end of the street: “This, then, is the Miraculous Tablet... and only yesterday in Orleans...” and for the last time, “Cinq sous, Madame,” “Non, Madame, trois sous,” and the hour being told by the church.

In the far distance, the bear is evidently dancing, for we faintly hear the tambourine. But his audience must now be small: before us, up the Grande Rue, moves a slow procession of men and women with baskets, sometimes two baskets to each person.

Still, the first market-woman does not appear to have provided them with their spoil. She alone has done no business, and sits, wizened and bent in half, over her shabby cauliflowers, her poor potatoes. Occasionally she sniffs.

But her sniff develops into a snort, when the cross-eyed, unshaven fellow with the accordion slouches up and, pausing for a moment, winks ... a fearful wink... leers, addresses her impudently and grotesquely with his eternal refrain:

“Tu sais bien que je t’ai-ai-me.”

IV
BOURGEOISIE

1. M. Durand at Marie-le-Bois

A French friend, M. Durand, thus writes to me:

“To-morrow morning at 11.47 my wife, myself, the three children and our deaf old servant Amélie, all leave for Marie-le-Bois; and to-morrow night, whilst you, mon cher ami, are eating the rosbif and drinking the pale ale of la vieille Angleterre, the Durand family will be dining off radishes, sardines, chicken, and cool salad, in the garden of the Villa des Roses.

“I have taken the villa for a month—our holiday. The Duvals and the Duponts occupy villas near by; and we shall play croquet together, and be amiable and happy. I, your stout friend, le gros Durand, will wear white shoes and no waistcoat, and I shall also smoke many pipes and enjoy long siestas under my own tree.” (What an idyllic picture—the large citizen Durand asleep in a vast cane chair, under a tree!)

“But to-day, mon vieux, what anxiety, what chaos, what despair, in our Paris home! We are distracted, we are in peril of losing our reason, so terrible, so sinister is the work of moving to Marie-le-Bois. The packing, the labelling, the ordering of the railway omnibus (it is engaged for ten o’clock precisely, but will it—O harassing question—arrive in time?), the emotion of the children, the ferocity of my wife, the deafness of superannuated Amélie—all these miseries have left me as weak as an old cat. You, who have travelled, will appreciate the agony of the situation. No more can I say, for I hear my wife crying: ‘Hippolyte, Hippolyte, what are you doing? You must be mad to write letters in such a crisis.’

“Adieu, therefore. Here, very cordially, are the two hands of,

“Georges Auguste Hippolyte Durand.”

Excellent, simple M. Durand! From his letter one would suppose that he is about to make the long journey from Paris to the Pyrenees; and that his luggage is proportionately considerable and elaborate. But, as a matter of fact, Marie-le-Bois lies humbly on the outskirts of Paris. A slow train from the St Lazare Station covers the distance in thirty-five minutes. And once arrived there, one clearly perceives, from the top of a small hill, the Sacré Cœur, the dome of the Panthéon, the sightseers (almost their Baedekers) on the Triumphal Arch! Only five and thirty minutes distant from Paris—and yet Madame Durand is “ferocious,” her husband is as “weak as an old cat,” and the omnibus has been ordered one hour and forty-seven minutes in advance, to drive over the mile that separates M. Durand’s dim, musty little flat from the station!

Luggage? As the Villa des Roses is let furnished, only wearing apparel and little particular comforts are required, and so the Durand luggage consists of no more than a shabby large trunk, two dilapidated valises, a bundle, and a collection of sticks, umbrellas, spades for the children and a fishing-rod for their father.

Why spades? There is no sand at Marie-le-Bois. Why that fishing-rod? Not a river floweth within miles and miles of the Villa des Roses. And it must furthermore be revealed that the “wood” of Marie-le-Bois consists in reality of a few acres of shabby bushes, dead grass and gaunt trees; that the villa itself is a hideous, gritty little structure, rendered all the more uninviting by what the estate agent calls an “ornamental” turret, and that never a rose (never even a common sunflower) has bloomed in the scrap of waste ground joyously designated by M. Durand a “garden.”

No matter; M. Durand, a simple, small bourgeois, is happy, his good wife rejoices, the three children run wild in the hot, dusty roads, deaf old Amélie is to be heard singing in a feeble, cracked voice in the kitchen; and the Duvals and the Duponts—also of the small bourgeoisie—are equally happy and merry in the equally hideous and gritty villas named “My Pleasure” and “My Repose.”

Between them they have hired a rough, bumpy field, in which they play croquet for hours at a time—the ladies in cotton wrappers and the gentlemen in their shirt-sleeves. But not enough mallets to go round and constant confusion as to whose turn it is to play.

“It is Durand’s turn,” says Dupont.

“No, it is Madame Durand’s,” states M. Duval.

“No, it is my turn—I haven’t played for twenty minutes,” protests the shrill voice of little Marie Dupont.

“Apparently it is somebody’s turn,” says M. Durand ironically.

And then do the three gentlemen respectively declare that the “situation” is “extraordinary” and “abominable” and—yes, “sinister”; and then, also, do the three wives proclaim their lords “egoists” and—Oh dear me—“imbeciles,” and then (profiting by the dispute) do the many children of the Duponts and the Durands and Duvals kick about the balls, and hop over (or dislodge) the hoops, and (when reprimanded) burst into tears.

“It’s mad,” cries M. Durand.

“Auguste, you disgust me,” says Madame Dupont to her husband.

“Mamma, Henri Durand has pulled my hair,” sobs little Germaine Duval.

At length on goes the game. But ten minutes later the same confusion, the same cries: “It’s my turn,” and “No, it is the turn of Madame Dupont,” and “I’ve only played once in the last hour,” and “The situation is becoming more and more sinister.”

Still, in the scraps of garden of the three villas there is peace. The gentlemen doze a great deal under their respective, their “own” anæmic trees. Flies buzz about them—but, as M. Durand observes, they are “country flies,” and therefore “innocent.” In the late afternoon M. Durand puts on his glasses, opens his Petit Parisien and says: “Let us hear what is happening in Paris.” As a matter of fact, M. Durand can almost hear what is happening in Paris from his chair; but he studies his paper deeply and gives vent to exclamations of “Ah!” and “That dear, extraordinary Paris—always excited, never tranquil!” as though he were an exile in the remotest of foreign lands.

As for M. Dupont, he is of the opinion that although newspapers are out of place in the country, “still a good citizen should keep in touch with affairs.” And says M. Duval: “A Parisian, wherever he be, should never altogether forget that he is a Parisian. Therefore it is his duty—I speak, of course, figuratively—to keep one eye on the capital.” Figuratively, indeed! M. Duval has only to mount upon his chair to behold Paris with both eyes, most clearly, most vividly.

And now night-time, and a lamp burning on a table in the garden of the Villa des Roses, and around the table, covered with coffee cups, the Durands and the Duponts and the Duvals. Happily they lie back in their chairs. Now and again the peevish, spiteful hum of the mosquito. Odd green insects dash themselves against the glass of the lamp.

“The air of the country, there is nothing like it; it is exquisite, sublime,” says M. Durand rapturously. “Breathe it in, my friends, breathe it in, with all your might.”

“Durand is right,” assents M. Dupont. “Let us not speak; let us only breathe.”

“Are we ready?” inquires M. Duval.

And the three M. D.’s and the three Madame D.’s, lying back in their chairs, breathe and breathe.

2. Pension de Famille. The Beautiful Mademoiselle Marie, who loved Gambetta

As a consequence of the death, in her ninety-third year, of Mademoiselle Marie Rosalie Losset, many a successful French barrister, politician and littérateur is recalling the early, struggling days of the past. He sees the Rue des Poitevins, a narrow little street in the heart of the Latin Quarter. He remembers the board over one of its doorways: “Pension Laveur. Cuisine Bourgeoise. Prix modérés.” He can almost smell the strong evening odour of cabbage and onion soup that assailed him in the dim entrance hall when he returned to the boarding-house exhausted, perhaps depressed from his lectures at the Sorbonne, his studies in the medicine schools, his first visits to the Law Courts.

As I am nothing of a greybeard, I am only able to write of Mademoiselle Marie Rosalie Losset and of the pension de famille in the Rue des Poitevins at second hand. It was as far back as 1838 that Mademoiselle Marie, then a jeune fille of eighteen, came up to Paris from tranquil, beautiful Savoy to help her sister and brother-in-law, M. and Madame Laveur, to conduct their new boarding-house. Tall, graceful, masses of golden hair—the “Greek Statue,” the great Gambetta called her, and the name clung. I must be excused from stating names and events in chronological order—so much has happened since the year 1840! But I can give the precise terms of the pension: five or six francs a day for full board, including white or red wine. Also I am able to record that whereas the sister and brother-in-law, M. and Madame Laveur, were suspicious, severe and close-fisted, Mademoiselle Marie Rosalie Losset—“Mademoiselle Marie” for short—was all gaiety and generosity, and sympathised with the struggles, disappointments and financial ennuis of the boarders.

Fortunately for the latter it was Mademoiselle Marie who made up the bills and had charge of the cash-box; the Laveurs occupied themselves exclusively with the kitchen and the household arrangements. Inevitably, the student boarders lost their hearts to the “Greek Statue”; but she laughed at their gallantry, and gaily wanted to know how on earth they could keep a wife when they couldn’t pay their own way. Bill of M. Paul a month and thirteen days overdue. Laundry account of M. Pierre five weeks in arrears, and the washerwoman making persistent “inquiries.” The washing-basin of M. Jacques, broken an eternity ago, still standing against him in the boarding-house ledger. And yet they wanted to marry her, all of them—the foolish sentimentalists, the dear, simple imbeciles! No, no; she would try to keep the Laveurs in ignorance of the unpaid bills; she would sew buttons on to M. Paul’s shabby coat, and blot out the stains from M. Pierre’s; she would say no more of the washing-basin; she would reassure the angry blanchisseuse; she would, in a word, do everything for the student boarders except marry them. “Tant pis,” cried the latter dramatically, “you have broken my heart. I shall never do anything in this world. You have ruined me!” Replied the radiant Savoyarde: “Nonsense! Work hard, and make a name for yourself. And when you are famous come and see me, and I promise not to remind you of the washerwoman, or the basin, or your faded old coat.”

Their studies finished, away from the narrow little Rue des Poitevins went the “heartbroken” boarders to make a “name for themselves.” Not so heartbroken but that they became either heroic or distinguished “citizens” of France. At the end of the plain, bourgeois dinner Mademoiselle Marie came to Gambetta’s table for dessert, and, amidst a cracking of nuts and the drinking of sour wine, the future great and noble Gambetta tempestuously held forth. A Republic for France was his cry. How the glasses danced as he thumped with his fist on the table! What cheers from the boarders; what a blush and a flush on the face of the “Greek Statue”! Gambetta stirred that sombre, musty boarding-house as later he roused the whole of France with his eloquence, enthusiasm, his glorious patriotism. His Republican programme was first conceived, his famous social battle-cry—“Le Cléricalisme, voilà l’ennemi”—was first sounded in that pension of the narrow, obscure Rue des Poitevins. Emotion, we may be sure, of the “Greek Statue” whilst her hero was away with the Army of the Loire. Gloom and hunger in the Pension Laveur during the Siege of Paris; never a sniff of the strong onion soup. Years later—1881—Gambetta Prime Minister, accession of “le Grand Ministère,”—and joy and pride of the “Greek Statue.” But downfall of the “Grand Ministère” after only two months’ power, and death of Gambetta in the following year—and then, yes, then, so, at least, I surmise, grief and tears of the Savoyarde, the “Greek Statue,” now become grey-headed, now a sexagenarian, now known to her boarders as “Tante Marie.”

So have we arrived at the twilight of the once radiant Savoyarde’s career. She is sixty, and the golden hair has gone grey, and familiarly and affectionately she is known amongst her boarders as “Auntie.” Still, however, does she sew on the missing buttons of the jeunesse of the Latin Quarter, and allow the pension bills to stand over, and overlook the matter of broken washing-basins, and pacify the angry blanchisseuse, and encourage her struggling boarders with the old words of long ago: “Work hard, and make a name for yourself, and come and tell me of your fame....” Years roll on—and “Tante Marie” becomes deaf and frail, and holds a hand to her ear when the pensionnaires of the past return to the Rue des Poitevins—elderly, many of them wealthy and distinguished—and pay her homage, and thank her emotionally for her kindnesses, and leave behind them autographed photographs bearing, amongst many other signatures, the names of Alphonse Daudet, François Coppée, Waldeck-Rousseau (Gambetta’s disciple), Reclus, the great physician, Millerand (ex-Minister of War), Pichon, the actual French Foreign Secretary, and a former President of the Republic, Émile Loubet.... More years roll by and “Tante Marie” becomes bent, shaky and wizened—a nonagenarian. Against her will, she is removed from the sombre, musty old Balzacian pension to a small, modern, electric-lighted apartment—where she dies. Dies, in spite of her beauty, brilliancy, irresistibility, a spinster. Dies with the admission: “It was Gambetta I loved. Impossible, of course. But he called me a Greek Statue!”

3. Pension de Famille. French and Piano Lessons. Les Saintes Filles, Mesdemoiselles Périvier

Three years have elapsed since Henri Rochette, the dashing young French financier with the handsome black beard, fell with a crash.

“Le Krach de Rochette. Arrest of the Financier. Millions of Losses. Ruin of Small Investors,” yelled the camelots on the boulevards. It was another affaire, a gigantic swindle reminiscent of Panama, in that the greater part of the victims were small, thrifty people, who now stood in thousands outside Rochette’s closed, darkened offices, weeping, raging, pathetically or passionately demanding the return of their savings.

“That Rochette, he came from nowhere—how did he manage it?” asked the prudent bourgeois, who had steeled himself against Rochette’s alluring, rattling circulars.

Yes, Rochette had come from nowhere—or rather, he had come from the country town of Melun, where he was a waiter in a greasy hotel; then he passed as clerk into a financial establishment; next he opened spacious offices of his own and successfully floated a dozen different companies. I believe the chief factor in Rochette’s success was the black beard he began to grow and to cultivate assiduously, elaborately, after his departure from Melun. With ambition, audacity and, above all, an ornamental black beard, no Frenchman should fail to make his fortune. Lemoine, the alchemist, Duez, the liquidator of the Religious Congregations, both of them had splendid black beards; and the first lived in great style, at the expense of even so astute a financier as Sir Julius Wernher, and the second kept up costly establishments on money belonging to the State. True, MM. Duez and Lemoine were shorn of their beards and sent to prison. But for a long while, at all events, a really fine black beard in France can excite admiration, inspire confidence, command capital and make millions.

Well, Rochette fell with a crash—and so a panic, so ruin in Paris. Cases of suicide. Other cases of death from the shock. Bailiffs in possession of small homes and dim shops, and the small people expelled. Up with the shutters in Rochette’s splendid offices; away to prison with the swindling financier, and off with his beard. Victims and victims—dazed, broken, distracted. Amongst the forlornest victims, the two Mesdemoiselles Périvier.

“Saintly creatures,” the stout, red-faced Curé of the church of St Sulpice used to say of the Mesdemoiselles Périvier. For years and years they had resided in his parish, attending a Low Mass and High Mass every morning, and Vespers every evening; for years and years they had subscribed to M. le Curé’s “good works,” and provided his favourite dishes of vol-au-vent and poulet-au-riz upon those monthly occasions when he dined with them in their dreary, six-roomed flat. It was the most sunless, the most joyless of homes; and the Mesdemoiselles Périvier were the frailest, the simplest, the most frugal of old spinsters, with scarcely a friend and not a relative in the world, and with no experience of the shocks and hardships of life until their small income was lost in the Rochette crash.

Their eyes stained with tears, the two lonely sisters sought out M. le Curé. He consoled them as best he could; urged them to bear their loss with resignation; exhorted them to seek relief in prayer. And day after day, in shadowy St Sulpice, the Mesdemoiselles Périvier prayed long, earnestly, humbly. Never did a complaint escape them. But they looked frailer and lonelier than ever in their rusty black dresses, as they crossed themselves with holy water on their way out of St Sulpice to their sunless, stricken home.

A few thousand francs invested in French rentes, but returning a sum insufficient to satisfy even the Mesdemoiselles Périvier’s frugal needs, was all that remained. Imperative, therefore, to do something. And one morning the elder Mademoiselle Périvier (aged sixty-three) and her sister, Mademoiselle Berthe Périvier (three years her junior) affixed a black-edged visiting-card to their door. Under their joint names appeared the intimation: “Pension de Famille. French and Piano Lessons. Moderate Terms.”

Then, in the Paris edition of The New York Herald, the Mesdemoiselles Périvier offered a home to English and American girls desirous of studying painting in the Latin Quarter; the six-roomed flat, in the shadow of St Sulpice, being also in the neighbourhood of Julian’s and Vitti’s art schools. A few flower-pots for the flat. The half-dumb, yellow-keyed old piano repaired. Far into the night the Mesdemoiselles Périvier studied French and English grammars; at intervals during the day the elder Mademoiselle Périvier was to be heard practising feebly on the piano... against the arrival of pupils and pensionnaires.

“Saintly creatures!” repeatedly exclaimed M. le Curé in the houses he visited. Earnestly he recommended the pension. Warmly, too, was it spoken of by kindly, well-meaning people.

But it was such a sunless, cheerless place, and the Mesdemoiselles Périvier looked such dim, old-fashioned spinsters in their rusty black dresses, that the recommendations proved fruitless. After a glance at the piano and flower-pots, intending pensionnaires took their leave, and found attractive, sociable quarters chez Madame Lagrange (“widow of a diplomat”), or at the “Villa des Roses,” or the “Pension Select,” where there were “musical evenings,” five-o’clock teas, electric light, comfortable corners and gossip and laughter.

A year went by; another twelvemonth—and then it became known round and about St Sulpice that the Mesdemoiselles Périvier had been disposing little by little of their Government stock. Yet they were never heard to complain. When dust had dimmed the visiting-card on the door, the card was replaced, and the advertisements still appeared in the Paris New York Herald.

It was noticed, however, that the eyes of the Mesdemoiselles Périvier were often swollen and red, that their cheeks showed traces of tears, and that the two lonely spinsters were more assiduous than ever in their visits to St Sulpice. At all times, in all weathers, they made their way to the church, and bowed their heads in prayer in the half-light, amidst the shadows.

It was on her return home from St Sulpice, one bitter afternoon, that Mademoiselle Berthe Périvier, the younger by three years of the two spinsters, contracted pneumonia, and died.

“Une sainte fille, une sainte fille,” reiterated M. le Curé, himself sobbing by the bedside.

And to-day the black-edged visiting-card—“Pension de Famille. French and Piano Lessons. Moderate Terms”—appears no longer on the door. With her last remaining French rentes passed the elder Mademoiselle Périvier. Gone, without a complaint, are the frail, frugal old spinsters. And M. Henri Rochette, on the eve of his release from prison, is growing a new beard.

4. The Affair of the Collars

It is a popular superstition that amongst the smaller French bourgeoisie one day is like another day, and all days are empty, colourless and banal. None of the joys of life—none of its shocks and surprises—up there in the Durands’ gloomy and oppressive fifth-floor appartement. From morning till night, infinite monotony, relieved only by Madame Durand’s periodical altercations with the concierge, the tradespeople, and deaf and dim-eyed old Amélie, the cook. The family newspaper is the Petit Journal, because of its two feuilletons. In a corner a little, damaged piano, upon which angular and elderly Mademoiselle Durand laboriously picks out the Polka des Joyeux and the Valse Bleue. In another corner Madame Durand knits away at a pink woollen shawl. And from a third corner M. Hippolyte Durand, in huge carpet slippers, tells his wife what has happened to him during the day.

The omnibus that took him to his office was full; his lunch consisted of navarin aux pommes and stewed pears; after leaving his bureau he played two games of dominoes with Dupont in the Café du Commerce, and the omnibus that brought him home was even fuller than that in which he travelled to business.

“There should be more omnibuses in Paris,” remarks Madame Durand.

“And how odious are the conductors!” exclaims elderly and embittered Mademoiselle Durand from the piano.

Then lights out at eleven o’clock, and the dull, dreamless sleep of the unimaginative, the worthy.

However, this popularly conceived idea of the life and mind of the smaller French bourgeoisie is something of a libel. Their existence is not eternally uneventful, nor their temperament hopelessly colourless. Now and again the dim, oppressive fifth-floor appartements are shaken by “Affairs” quite as exciting and incoherent in their own way as those that have convulsed the Palace of Justice and Chamber of Deputies. There was once a Dreyfus Affair. There were also the Syveton and Steinheil Affairs. All three caused the Parisians (who dearly love imbroglios and incoherencies) to exclaim: “C’est le comble!”—in colloquial English: “It’s the limit!”

But, in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris, there rages to-day an Affair that must be awarded the first place amongst all other Affairs for sheer confusion, dizziness and irresponsibility.

Thus:

Three weeks ago M. Henri Bouzon, a stout, middle-aged bourgeois, bought a dozen new collars from a “general” clothing establishment known as “The Joy of the Gentleman.” In due course the collars went to the laundry, but twelve other collars were returned in their place, and these M. Bouzon rejected. A second lot of collars—again somebody else’s. Then a third wrong delivery, and a fourth. By the time a fifth contingent had arrived M. Bouzon was collarless and desperate.

“Once again, these are not my collars,” he cried. “But as they fit me, I will keep them.”

Next day, appearance of Madame Martin, the blanchisseuse, in a state of emotion. The fifth contingent of collars belonged to a M. Aristide Dubois, who was clamouring for them. He had acquired them only recently at “The Paradise of the Bachelor,” and was furious at their loss.

“Bother Aristide Dubois,” shouted M. Bouzon. “Where are my own dozen collars from ‘The Joy of the Gentleman’? Return them and I will give up the Dubois collars—which I am wearing.”

Despair of the blanchisseuse. She searched and searched for the Bouzon collars, but in vain; and tearfully, then frantically did she implore Henri Bouzon to be “amiable” and “gentil” and surrender up the collars of Aristide Dubois.

“He is a terrible man—such a temper,” pleaded the blanchisseuse. “I had to tell him you were wearing his collars, and he threatened to call on you and tear them off your neck.”

“Let him come,” cried M. Bouzon. Then, following Madame Martin out on to the staircase he shouted over the banisters: “And tell Dubois from me that he is a brigand and a bandit.”

Inevitably, the concierges and tradespeople of Montparnasse got to hear of the dispute. It was discussed in doorways and at street corners, and in her steamy blanchisserie Madame Martin held little levees of the Montparnasse servants, who took the story home to their masters and mistresses, who in their turn became garrulous and excited over the Dubois and Bouzon collars. Then, one memorable afternoon, Aristide Dubois—another stout and middle-aged bourgeois—called upon Henri Bouzon. And the following dialogue took place:—

“Sir, you are wearing the collars I bought recently at ‘The Paradise of the Bachelor.’”

“Sir, I have no wish to speak to you, and I beg you to withdraw.”

“Monsieur, vous aurez de mes nouvelles.”

That was all, but it caused a commotion in Montparnasse. Aristide Dubois’ last words, “Sir, you will hear from me,” signified nothing less than a duel. Yes; Bouzon and Dubois on the field of honour, sword or pistol in hand, with doctors in attendance! “Both of them are terrible men,” related Madame Martin, whose blanchisserie now became a popular place of rendez-vous. “Impossible to reason with them. They will fight to the death.” Equally sought after were the respective concierges of the Dubois and Bouzon families, and the tradespeople who served them.

The discussion spreading, all Montparnasse soon found itself indirectly and chaotically mixed up in the Affair of the Collars. It was Collars in a hundred bourgeois homes, in cafés, in the shady Luxembourg Gardens, even amongst the enormous, apoplectic cochers on the cab-ranks.

“I am for Dubois,” declared some.

“Henri Bouzon has my sympathy,” announced others. “It is the most distracting of affairs,” agreed everybody. Thus, fame of Henri Bouzon and Aristide Dubois! After fifty years of obscurity, there they were—suddenly—the Men of the Hour. Such was their importance, their renown, that when they appeared in the Montparnasse streets people nudged one another and whispered:

“Here comes Henri Bouzon.”

And: “There goes Aristide Dubois.”

... Such has been the state of Montparnasse during the last three weeks, and to-day that usually tranquil neighbourhood is literally convulsed by the Affair of the Collars. No duel has taken place: but MM. Dubois and Bouzon exchange lurid letters, in which they call one another “traitors,” and “Apaches,” and “sinister assassins.” Thus, shades of the Dreyfus Affair and of the Affairs Syveton and Steinheil! Here, in the Café du Dôme, sits M. Bouzon, surrounded by Bouzonites. There, in the Café de la Rotonde, M. Dubois and his own supporters are established,—and in both places, night after night, hot controversies rage, the marble tables are thumped, and MM. Dubois and Bouzon are severally applauded and toasted by their admirers. Become celebrities, they have blossomed out into silk hats and frock coats, and the waiters bow before them, and the café proprietors actually address them as “cher maître.” At times they dramatically exclaim: “Ah, my poor head! This affair is destroying me: but I will fight to the last,” and there are murmurs of sympathy, which MM. Bouzon and Dubois (always in their respective cafés) acknowledge with the condescension of a Briand or a Delcassé or a Clemenceau. For, most indisputably, they are great public characters. The post brings them letters of congratulation or abuse; the policemen salute them: and “The Paradise of the Bachelor” has named a collar after Aristide Dubois, whilst “The Joy of the Gentleman” has issued the intimation: “For ease, chic, durability, wear the Collar Bouzon.” Then, to live up to their renown as the Men of the Hour, MM. Dubois and Bouzon go about with bulky portfolios under their arms, and a grim, determined expression. “They are doing too much. They will certainly collapse. It is even worse than the Dreyfus Affair,” says Montparnasse. And, exclaims Madame Martin, in her steamy and crowded blanchisserie: “Terrible men! I have tried to make peace between them by offering them all kinds of collars. I have even declared myself ready to buy them collars out of my own pocket. But they only go red in the face, and shout, and won’t hear a word.”

And now—in the words of the journalists—a “sensational development.” It is announced, breathlessly, hysterically by Madame Martin, that at last she has traced the dozen missing collars, bought by M. Bouzon at “The Joy of the Gentleman,” to the bourgeois fifth-floor appartement of a M. Alexandre Dupont. He has been wearing them all these weeks. And he refuses to surrender them. And he, too, is a “terrible man.” And he has called M. Dubois a “convict,” and M. Bouzon “le dernier des misérables.” And, if they come within his reach, he will hurl both of them into the Seine.

“Le comble” [the limit], gasps Montparnasse. All over the neighbourhood goes the statement that M. Alexandre Dupont bought his dozen collars at that other Montparnasse clothing establishment, “The One Hundred Thousand Supreme Shirts.”

“The man Alexandre Dupont is as great a scoundrel as the man Aristide Dubois,” cries M. Bouzon to his admiring supporters in the Café du Dôme.

“It is impossible to determine which of the two is the more infamous and diabolical, the creature Bouzon or the lunatic Dupont,” shouts M. Dubois, amidst the cheers of his followers in the Café de la Rotonde.

“Bouzon and Dubois—I consign them to the Seine and the Morgue,” storms Alexandre Dupont, addressing his newly gathered partisans in the Café du Repos.

Out comes that other “general” clothing establishment, “The One Hundred Thousand Supreme Shirts,” with the announcement: “The Only Collar in Paris is the Collar Dupont.”

“All three of them are terrible,” affirms Madame Martin to her audience in the stifling blanchisserie.

“The collars of Bouzon, then the collars of Dubois, and next the collars of Dupont—but where have they all gone to? Where are we? What is going to happen!” cries, emotionally and distractedly, Montparnasse.

Nobody knows. Nobody will ever know. But Bouzon, Dubois and Dupont, so obscure three weeks ago, are the Men of the Hour in Montparnasse to-day. And one of the three will, almost indubitably, represent Montparnasse in the Hôtel de Ville after the next Municipal Election,—then be promoted to the Chamber of Deputies—then will eloquently, passionately inform the Palais Bourbon that Incoherency is the Peril of the Present Age.

V
ON STRIKE

1. When it was Dark in Paris

Eight o’clock at night, and the electric lights burning brightly, and the band playing gaily, and the customers chatting happily in this large, comfortable café. Although it is the “dead” season, business is brisk. Here and there an elegant Parisienne, eating an ice. In corners, groups of card-players. And next to me, three stout, red-faced, prosperous-looking bourgeois, to whom the proprietor of the café pays particular attention. He hopes they are well. He hopes their ladies and their dear children are well. He hopes their affairs are going well. From their replies, I learn that the three bourgeois are important tradesmen of the quarter.

Suddenly their conversation turns to strikes—and naturally my three neighbours are indignant with the strikers. The strikers spoil affairs; the strikers should therefore be arrested, imprisoned, transported. Half-a-dozen of them might be executed, as an example. The Bourse du Travail and the offices of the General Confederation of Labour should be razed to the ground. No other country but France would tolerate such anarchy. One is on the verge of a revolution, and——

At this point the scores of electric lights jump excitedly—turn dim—go out. And it is darkness.

“The strikers!” exclaims the first bourgeois.

“The electricians!” cries the second.

“Ah, the scoundrels, the brigands, the assassins!” shouts the third.

Mercy me, the excitement! The three bourgeois light matches, everyone lights matches,—and in the light from the matches I see the proprietor standing on a chair in the middle of the café. Loudly he claps his hands; loudly he cries to the waiters: “Candles.” Then, for some mysterious reason, the customers also mount chairs. The lights have gone out, so one mounts chairs! If you don’t immediately mount a chair when the lights have gone out, heaven only knows what will not happen to you. And so I, too, stand on a chair, and light matches, and join in the cries of: “It’s a strike; it’s a strike.”

For my own part, I rejoice. I love the cries, the confusion, the amazing aspect of Paris—when it is dark. Here, in this café, the band is idle; the card-players have stopped their games; the proprietor is still clapping his hands and clamouring for candles. However, no candlesticks: so, vulgarly, as in low places, one uses bottles. A bottle for every table and the grease (another low spectacle) trickles down the bottles. The lady at the desk, whose highly important duty it is to keep the accounts, is given a dilapidated old lantern. Very old and very dilapidated, too, are the petroleum lamps brought up from the cellars where they have remained hidden so long as to acquire a sinister coating of verdigris. “It’s deadly poison,” says one of the bourgeois next to me. “I won’t have it. Fetch me a candle.” So the waiter bringeth the bourgeois a candle, and, no sooner has he placed the bottle on the table than it topples over and falls against the breast of the bourgeois.

“A cloth, a cloth!” he shouts. “I am covered with grease.” And he storms. And he goes purple in the face. And violently he rubs his waistcoat, making the stains worse. And as he rubs he cries furiously, of the strikers: “Ah, the scoundrels, the brigands, the assassins.”

In the street, only gas. And as I make my way to the grands boulevards, I perceive waiters speeding about in all directions, and hear them asking policemen for the nearest grocer’s shop. The waiters are in quest of candles. The waiters dare not return to their cafés without packets and packets of candles. But most of the grocers are closed: and so on speed the waiters, flushed, breathless, through the gloom.

No theatres to-night. Out went the lights just as the curtain was about to rise, and on to the stage stepped the manager, lamp or candlestick in hand—a sepulchral figure—to beg the audience to disperse in good order. No telephones to-night. Out went the lights in the Exchange, to the confusion, to the terror of the ladies. They are there in the darkness, waiting for candles. Then, gloom in most of the newspaper offices. Out went the lights, suddenly, unanimously. “Lamps, candles!” shouted the editor. Thus, office-boys also in desperate quest of candles. And they come into collision with the waiters. And there are tumultuous scenes in the grocers’ shops. And the grocers cry desperately: “One at a time; one at a time. I shall faint. I shall lose my reason. I shall die.”

Thousands and thousands of candles in the handsome cafés of the grands boulevards, and all of them in vulgar bottles. Thus, infinite candle grease; also, more verdigris. But what a difference between the tempers of the bourgeois and the boulevardier! M. le Boulevardier laughs, jokes, rejoices. He is in search of a friend,—and so picketh up a bottle and makes a tour of the café. “Clever fellows; they struck just at the right hour,” he says, of the strikers. Amiable, too, are the English visitors to Paris in Darkness. A charming young girl near me produces picture post cards and writes hurriedly by candlelight. And I expect she is writing: “My Dear,—Such fun, such excitement, I wish you were here. All the electric lights have gone out and we’ve only got candles. It’s too funny. I’ll tell you all about it to-morrow. Best love from Ethel.”

On the terraces of the cafés strings of Chinese lanterns are being put up by the waiters; down the boulevards rush frantic hawkers with revolutionary newspapers, The Social War and The Voice of the People; along them, at a trot, comes a detachment of cuirassiers. “The troops,” cries a Parisian. “Clemenceau is at it again,” says another. “A few years ago Clemenceau fiercely denounced the practice of sending troops against the strikers,” remarks a third. “But to-day M. Clemenceau is Prime Minister,” replies a fourth.

Now, candles burn down and have to be replaced. Now, too, theatrical managers, newspaper men and all those most affected by the darkness discuss the probable length of the strike. “A couple of days at the most,” says a manager. “Perhaps only twenty-four hours,” says his friend. “Clemenceau is already taking measures to——”

But even as he speaks the electric lights break into a dull glow,—jump excitedly,—then flash. The strike is over; it was but a two-hours’ strike, intended as a protest against the killing of three strikers by the troops at Villeneuve-St-Georges and as a proof of what the Electricians’ Trade Union can do.

So away go the candles and the old lamps. The bands strike up; the card-players resume their games; the newspapers go to press. “The assassins had to give in,” says the bourgeois exultingly. “The electricians will surprise us again,” says the boulevardier, with a laugh. “I’m so sorry it’s all over,” says the charming young English girl, glancing at her post cards. And so am I: for I love the cries, the confusion, the amazing aspect of Paris, when it is dark.

2. Birds of the State at the Post Office

From a very fascinating English girl, domiciled in Yorkshire, I have just received the following request:—“I hear you are having another postal strike in Paris, and that carrier-pigeons are being used. How charming! And what a lucky man you are to be living in such an exciting country! Down here nothing ever happens. So do be a dear and send me a letter by a pigeon—it would be lovely.”

Thus news travels slowly to my very fascinating correspondent’s home in Yorkshire. The postal strike, the general strike and all the other strikes are over: and yet it is certain that if I could but gratify Miss Ethel Grahame’s desire I should rise considerably in her esteem. Strike or no strike, she would dearly love to have a pigeon, that had flown all the way from the grands boulevards to Scarborough, come tapping at her window. To her friends she would say: “Look! A letter from Paris! And brought all that long, long distance by a pigeon!” Naturally, cries of astonishment from the friends. Then, great headlines in the local papers: “Pigeon-Carrying Extraordinary,” and “Pigeon as Postman,” and “The Pigeon from Paris.” Next, consternation of Miss Ethel Grahame’s innumerable admirers, who would immediately proceed to fear and hate me as a formidable rival. And finally, and best of all, my letter put carefully away, and preserved for ever and for ever, in a scented desk.

Dreams, only dreams! I know nothing about pigeons; and then it has been stated that every pigeon in France, who is anything of a carrier, has been requisitioned by the Government. The postal strike is over, but the carrier-pigeons of Paris and of the provinces nevertheless remain at the exclusive disposal of the Cabinet. They have become State birds; they may fly only for the Republic.

So, what a life! As I cross the Luxembourg Gardens (the pleasantest of all the Paris parks), this fine, sunny afternoon, I reflect bitterly over the absurdity and irony of things. Gorgeous, costly birds, such as the parrot or the peacock, I could easily obtain; but a plain carrier-pigeon, no! Since the French Government is responsible for my predicament, may it fall! And may the State birds (if ever employed) play M. Clemenceau and his colleagues false! And——

A pigeon! Yes—there, on the path before me—a fine, strong, handsome pigeon; the very pigeon to make the trip from Paris to Scarborough. And my heart beats. And my brow throbs. And I am all excitement, all emotion, when—O bitter disappointment!—it suddenly occurs to me that this must be an ordinary pigeon, one of those idle, good-for-nothing pigeons that hop about public gardens in quest of crumbs. That is his life; that is all he is capable of doing. O fool that I was, to have thought for a moment that here was the very bird to go tapping at Miss Ethel Grahame’s window!