Chapter IX: Part 9

All this world of the people, which ranges from M. Brispot's comfortable and respectable _Bon Bourgeois_, taking his summer ease in his court-yard, down to almost unknown depths, has its moments of leisure and takes its relaxation as well as its betters. Two of M. Vierge's characteristic sketches may serve to illustrate two of the more popular and more innocent methods,--the informal manner in which the frequenters of the Parc de Montsouris, on the line of the southern fortifications, dispose themselves on the grass, around the kiosque of the military band, to listen to the music, and a very characteristic feature of the popular observance of the fête of the 14th of July, the balls in the open street. At almost every important crossing or open space, not only in the so-called _quartiers excentriques_, but in such official neighborhoods as those of the Louvre and the Hôtel de Ville, temporary bandstands are set up, and around them the people dance cheerfully, mostly in ungraceful waltzes, all the evening, and frequently all night. In front of the cafés in the popular quarters, the music of a violin or a hurdy-gurdy, or even of the dreadful organ of the "merry-go-rounds," or _chevaux de bois_, will furnish inspiration enough to perspiring couples who will repeatedly leave their beer or their _sirop_ to revolve giddily on the pavement till, quite breathless, they return to their seats. All this is done with such frank simplicity and good nature, such a characteristically cheerful French appropriation of the public street for domestic purposes, that the foreigner, sitting looking on somewhat scornfully at first, gradually veers round to their point of view, and, if he be young enough, probably ends by being quite willing to get up and dance, himself, with some of these slim-waisted, pretty French maids.

From a drawing, in colors, by Pierre Vidal.]

As the official fête of 1898 had a new feature added to it, the celebration of the centennial of Michelet, it naturally took on still another diversion, that of the election of a Muse of Paris, selected from among the most beautiful young working-girls of the capital. Her official functions consisted in being crowned, in presiding at the ceremony before Michelet's bust, set up in front of the Hôtel de Ville, and in strewing flowers before it. Then there was chanted before her: "Good people, Rich and poor, Hasten hither! Come all to admire, The Muse of Paris! She is a nice little working-girl, Whom the poet-kings of poverty, Have anointed queen of their chimeras," etc. The election of a queen of the washerwomen, or, rather, of a _reine des blanchisseuses_, has long been one of the important ceremonials of the Mi-carême festivities, and grotesque accounts are given of the intrigues, the rivalries, the heart-burnings, which this choice entails, of the adventures of the sovereign and her attendant ladies in assuming their somewhat unwonted toilettes for this great occasion, and of the still greater efforts of the _garçons_ of the _lavoirs_ to accoutre themselves as d'Artagnans and Henri III's. However, everything passes off for the best; and it is a dull lane that has no turning.

Among the less praiseworthy diversions, neither rat-baiting nor cock-fighting have much favor in Paris. A pair of game-cocks were imported from England in 1772, but the "sport" was not appreciated. In the country parts of France it is more practised; and one of the most important of the establishments, affected by the Parisians, devoted to the murderous combats of dogs and rodents, is the Ratier Club of Roubaix, whose modest wooden façade, rising at the back of a court which is entered through a sufficiently common-place cabaret, is shown in the illustration. On the left is a great lantern to light the dingy approach, and on the right, full of noise and tumult, the office and the weighing-stand. In the interior, the arrangements are those usually adopted,--the wooden benches are ranged around the _parc_, or pit, a large wire cage nearly five mètres long and two and a quarter high, elevated on a platform about a mètre from the floor. It has no top, but the upper portions of the walls present a smooth band of metal up which the rats cannot climb. The dog is introduced through a sliding door on the floor, and his antagonists are emptied from a box over the top. They are of three kinds, water-rats, sewer-rats, and granary-rats; the first are of a placid disposition and are rarely used; the last, in black, are the fiercest, and consequently the most desirable. The dogs are usually bull-dogs, fox-terriers, or a species with a scanty hair, called _griffons_; they are usually pitted against four rats at a time, and their prowess is according to the brevity of the time in which they dispose of them. There is a legend that one champion despatched a hundred rats in seventeen minutes, thirty seconds. A good dog will finish the four rats in ten or twelve seconds, notwithstanding their doublings and turnings, the speed with which they climb the wire trellis, and the fierceness with which they turn on him and fasten on his jaw. There are various methods of conducting these contests; the _chasse à excitations_, in which the proprietor of the dog is permitted to run around the cage and excite his animal by voice and gesture; that _à la muette_, in which he is strictly forbidden to make a sound or a sign; that _à obstacles_, in which the rodents are concealed under every second or third of a number of flower-pots reversed on the floor, or in which they are furnished with bundles of straw in which to seek refuge, or favored by an arrangement of partitions about a foot high, arranged in the manner of a Saint Andrew's cross, and over which the dog has to leap while they traverse them through small semicircular openings on a level with the floor. The dogs are classified by weight; the price of entry varies according to the variety of the _chasse_, and the sum of the prizes distributed sometimes amounts to as much as fifteen hundred francs.

From a drawing, in colors, by Pierre Vidal.]

As to the more aristocratic sport of horse-racing, we have already seen that the annually-recurring _Grand Prix de Paris_ has been elevated to the dignity of a capital municipal institution. But it was early recognized that this diversion, which has attained such extraordinary development in the capital within the last twenty years, owed a very considerable proportion of its popularity to the facilities which it offered for gambling. The true sportsman's interest in the improvement of the equine race was by no means sufficiently widely diffused to maintain the hippodromes of the Sociétés de Course. This was abundantly demonstrated when, in the spring of 1887, the government forbade all betting on the race-course; the indifference of the public was promptly manifested by the great falling off in the attendance. At the end of a few weeks, it was found necessary to remove the restriction, but it was wished at the same time not to encourage the spirit of gambling, which threatened to affect all classes of society. The _Pari Mutuel_ [mutual betting], which was accordingly authorized, offers to-day the only legal method of betting on the race-courses. It consists of a series of offices established on the tracks, where the public makes its bets on the horses running. It registers the bets, receives the money, and divides the winnings among those entitled to them. "A bettor wishes to stake fifty francs upon a horse which, we will say, is number six on the list; he goes to one of the five-franc bureaux, and asks for ten tickets on number six winning, or ten on number six 'placed.' He pays his fifty francs, receives ten tickets bearing the required number, and with the stipulation 'winning' or 'placed,' and he has no more to do but to wait the result of the race. If he win, as soon as the division is made he has only to present himself at the treasurer's office of the bureau where he made his bet, and he receives his winnings in exchange for his ten tickets." On all the operations there is deducted a tax of seven per cent. in the Parisian Sociétés de Courses,--one per cent. for breeding purposes, two for local charities, and four for the Sociétés themselves. The latter portion, which is six, eight, or ten per cent. in the provinces, is added to the sums gained from the entrance fees, and employed for the expenses, and to increase the prizes offered the following year.

At Longchamp there are about one hundred and fifty bureaux of the Pari Mutuel, and nearly twice as many on the day of the Grand-Prix. No bet is accepted under five francs, and there are special bureaux for ten, twenty, fifty, and even one hundred, and five hundred francs at the weighing-stand; the bets are of two kinds,--first, for the winning horse, and, second, for the horses "placed" one and two, when there are at least four horses running; one, two, and three, when there are at least eight. When two or more horses belong to the same proprietor and run in the same race, the Pari Mutuel gives the whole stable, that is to say, that if one of the horses of the stable wins the race the bets made upon the other horses of the stable, one or several, are paid as though laid upon the winning animal himself. This rule applies only to bets made upon _one_ winner; for the places, it is not a question of the whole stable, and each horse is paid according to his order in arriving at the winning-post. When all the tickets are collected, the sum total of the bets is ascertained, the seven per cent. tax is deducted, and the sum remaining is divided among the winning tickets. For the _placés_, there are four operations to be performed after the deduction of the seven per cent.,--first, to subtract from the sum to be divided the sum total of the bets upon the places. This operation has for its object to save the stake of the bettor and to guarantee him against the risks of receiving a sum less than he wagered; second, to divide the new sum thus obtained by two or by three, according as there are two or three _placés_; third, to divide each half or each third proportionally to the number of bets on each _placé_; fourth, to add the amount of the bet previously subtracted. All the employés of the Pari Mutuel are strictly forbidden to bet, themselves, under penalty of losing their situations; and the whole is under the control of the Minister of Agriculture and the inspectors of finances.

The establishment of this official regulation was speedily followed by the opening of unauthorized "pool-rooms" all over Paris, in cheap cabarets, tobacco-shops, coiffeurs' salons, anywhere, in which the general public were invited to come in and bet on any horse they chose, without any further concern about attending the races, and with the deduction of the smallest possible commission for the bureau, in some cases fifty or twenty-five centimes. These improvised agencies, in a great majority of cases, hold no communication whatever with the Sociétés, thus depriving them of their commissions, and offer their clients only the slightest guarantees of good faith. This abuse became so flagrant that the law had to be invoked.

The popular cafés, cabarets, buvettes, brasseries, châteaux, moulins, etc., are so numerous as to be entitled to a special chapter. One of the most famous, the Moulin de la Galette, of the Montmartre quarter, is here illustrated, with a touch of the picturesque. It may be reached by the Rue Lepic, more circuitous and possibly more safe than the acrobatic ladders which lead directly to its door. Its usual customers vary from workmen's families through many varieties of painters, strangers, _filles_, and _marlous_. Its dances are not of a kind to recommend themselves to the conventional. It is even customary, before each one, for each couple to pay four sous, and it is usually the lady who pays for her cavalier. The beer-shops, or _brasseries_,--"more properly _embrasseries_,"--were invented in the Latin Quarter, but have since multiplied more on the lower boulevards. It is asserted that they were better at the beginning; M. Maurice Barres declared at one time: "The _brasserie à femmes_ is quite truly a salon." He appreciated them for the severe discipline maintained in them by the proprietor, or, at least, for the restraint imposed upon the more enterprising clients and servitors by the example of the others. "There was coquetry and flirtage, without much more." He considered this institution necessary; its influence was, in his opinion, beneficent. These superficial endearments, this amiable tone, this care to please which was there displayed, "relaxed the mind and restored the neglected faculties of our sensitiveness." Since then, he has asked himself whether the _brasseries_ have changed or whether he has grown older. Certainly, the qualities which he discovered in them no longer exist. The institution does not seem necessary; the salon is usually a hole; the attendants appear to be the refuse of those places of entertainment the character of which is revealed by the unusual size of the house number over the entrance. Even the Parisian gilding of vice sometimes wears off.

More of these unfortunates, of various shades, may be seen displaying themselves in the open streets, in the public fiacres as in their salons, during the Carnival, and especially on the day of Mardi Gras,--arrayed as Pierrettes, clownesses, _rosières_ [winners of the prize of virtue], and avocats with very open robes, their bared arms and shoulders defying the weather. Their proper establishments are known by a great variety of appellations, the old word _bordel_ being now considered gross. More commonly they are designated discreetly as _Tolérances_ or _Gros Numéros_; in the popular slang they are _claques_ or _boxons_. Many of them have special designations, as the celebrated _Botte de paille_ mentioned by Edmond de Goncourt in his _Fille Elisa_; one of the noisiest was known as the _Perroquet gris_; and another, from its specialty, _Au Télescope_. "But at Paris all these _maisons chaudes_," says an expert in these matters, Rodolphe Darzens, "have a special physiognomy,--they are not, as in the provinces, discreet localities, with an atmosphere of familiar conventionality, in which the father brings his eldest son to pass the evening with the notary of the quarter and the pharmacien of the public square, in an interminable game of billiards or of _piquet voleur_. Houses very _comme il faut_, in which no incongruity would be tolerated, from which a Parisian was even chased one day for having pronounced a gross word. Neither do they resemble those vast establishments in the seaports or in the commercial cities, in which the rutting assumes a character of savage eagerness and of primitive fury.

"Excepting in the houses of the exterior quarters of the city which are frequented by soldiers and by coarse peasants, who quickly recover from their first bedazzlement at the fine salons ornamented with mirrors and gilding, illuminated by gas or by electricity, and in which the usual visitors are composed almost exclusively of workmen, which constitutes them rather a species of brasserie, the prostitution in Paris has been refined by luxury. The _viveurs_ enter them, no longer to finish the night in them, but to pass a few minutes, to yawn and to drink champagne in the company of some young women lightly clad, indifferent and passive, pretty sometimes, bestial almost always. You can rarely avoid hearing confidentially from one of them her story, the eternal story of love betrayed. There are sometimes to be found among them some who have received a real education,--these speedily acquire an influence over their comrades, who listen to them, admire them, ask their advice. They are the queens of the household, and _Madame_ treats with them on a footing of equality.

"Frequently an inmate of one of these convents of the Devil will seat herself at the piano, and then some revery of Chopin will rise, melancholy, through the air, while the tears will appear in the eyes of her hearers.

"When, 'finally alone,' to fill up their long leisure of waiting, they play never-ending games of _écarté_, or, indeed, tell each other's fortunes by the cards, in the hope that the promises they read in them may be speedily realized, promises of a better life, outside of the cursed house, of meeting a monsieur very rich, of country parties, carriages, a little hôtel, who knows? To see, perhaps,--a marriage.

"But a voice, interrupting these dreams, that of the imperious matron, orders curtly: 'To the salon, ladies!'"

The Parisian winter is an institution of which no good can be said. The tremendous, arctic cold of the United States is almost unknown, as is also the beautiful, clear, frosty weather; in their stead come an almost endless succession of gray, misty, unutterably damp days, with a searching, raw cold that penetrates even to the dividing asunder of bone and marrow. The dearness of fuel, and the totally inadequate heating arrangements in most houses, add to the cruel discomfort of this season, in which the poor always suffer greatly. The number of unemployed is always large, and among them are frequently to be found those accustomed to the comforts and refinements of life. A recent article in a Parisian journal describing the charitable distribution of hot soups by the organization of the _Bouchée de pain_ [mouthful of bread] cites the instance of a lady among these applicants, so well dressed that the attendant thought it right to say to her: "Have you come through simple curiosity, madame? In that case, you should not diminish the portion of those who are hungry." The lady answered simply: "_I_ am hungry." It appeared that she was an artist, had exhibited twice in the Salon, and yet was reduced to this necessity. This charitable organization is distinguished from most others by the fact that it asks no questions and imposes no conditions on those who come to it for aid. Consequently, its various points of distribution are crowded with long lines of the shivering and famished, and the smallest offering from the charitable is thankfully received.

On the suppression of the recent general strike among the workmen of Paris, in the month of October, 1898, there appeared, in a number of the _Matin_, a serious article giving some important details concerning the wages and the manner of spending them, and presented from the point of view of a friend of the laboring classes. The writer, M. Manini, had interviewed one of his friends, an important contractor, whose six hundred workmen had followed the example of their comrades, gone on strike, and been compelled to abandon it by the prudent action of the civil and military authorities in protecting all those who were willing to labor. "I expressed to my friend my surprise that workmen earning, at a minimum, six francs, and some of them, masons and rough-casters, eight and ten francs a day, should have ceased work under pretence of insufficient pay. I showed him the instructive table published by an evening journal, and according to which the rough-casters earned from eleven to twelve francs a day; the stone-cutters, eight francs; the journeymen masons, eight francs; the apprentice masons, five and a half francs; the bricklayers, eight francs; the stone-sawyers, nine to eleven francs,--in a word, as much as a lieutenant in garrison in Paris, and more than a lieutenant in garrison in the provinces.

From a drawing by A. Lozos.]

"'All that is perfectly true,' replied my friend. 'Never have the workmen on buildings had such a fête. Since Paris has become a vast ant-hill in which the work of preparation for 1900 goes on without ceasing, the workmen make magnificent working-days and have no fear of being "laid off." They have before them three magnificent years. But you are not aware of the conditions of a workman's life in Paris. They bear no resemblance to those of the life in the provinces, where similar wages would insure a comfortable living. In Paris, you see, the workman lives at a great disadvantage, and, in reality, it may be said that he is obliged to meet the expenses of two establishments.... Paris is an immense city, in which the distances are very great. The laborers, the diggers, and shovellers live, nearly all of them, on the heights of Clignancourt and of Belleville; the masons, for I know not what reason, prefer the quarter of the Gobelins. Well, work is carried on in all parts of Paris, is it not? The laborer from Belleville, the workman hired by me or by my overseer, arrives at his field of labor at six o'clock in the morning. This spot is at Auteuil, at the Trocadéro, at Passy, anywhere. It will be absolutely impossible for him to return to Belleville for his meals. He will have to eat on the spot, there where he works.

"'Well, arrived at the _chantier_ at half-past six, and hard at work at seven, the workmen go at nine o'clock to get some soup and a piece of cheese. It is to some little eating-house in the neighborhood that they betake themselves. The cost of this _casse-croûte_ [bread-crust], as they call it, fifty centimes at the least. At eleven o'clock, the déjeuner, always at the wine-shop or the little restaurant. When one works in the open air, and when one propels, by the strength of his arms, shovelfuls of earth weighing five kilos each a height of two mètres into the cart, one is hungry. Notwithstanding the utmost frugality, the déjeuner amounts to thirty sous, thirty-five sous at the least. We have now expended two francs, twenty-five centimes. About four o'clock, another mouthful and a glass of wine,--say ten sous, about. We have now reached fifty-five sous, have we not? In case the workman should be fatigued, or that the distance home should be too great,--observe that from Auteuil to Clignancourt there are nine good kilomètres, that is more than two leagues,--he dines on the spot, say twenty-five sous more.

"'If the workman earns eight francs, here are his wages reduced more than one-half. And you will remember that the wife and the brats eat at home; also, that it is necessary to clothe yourself and to clothe the little ones, that it is necessary to pay the rent, that, sometimes, there is an old infirm mother at home, that an illness is readily contracted.... In fact, the workman, at Paris, who labors at a distance is obliged to eat away from his own house, and he expends for himself alone as much as would be required to support the whole family. It may therefore be said, that he has to provide for two households,--the outside establishment, himself, and the inside establishment, the wife and the children.'"

It does not seem to have occurred to the author of this interesting exposé, or to his interlocutor, that there was a very simple and well-known remedy for this idiotic and extravagant mode of living,--the dinner-pail. The contractor cited to his friend the case of the masons from the provinces, the Creusois and the Limousins, who are enabled to save money by leaving their families in the country, and that of the London workman who commences his day's labor at nine o'clock in the morning and who ends it at five,--but without any interruption. "At one o'clock in the afternoon he breaks a piece of bread, which he generally brings in his work-bag; and at six o'clock, thanks to the 'Metropolitan,' he is again with his family, comfortably seated at table." The workman's dinner-pail, or its equivalent, is not altogether unknown to the Parisian _ouvrier_, and picturesque groups may sometimes be seen, sometimes with the wife's presence to cheer and adorn, eating and drinking comfortably _al fresco_, on the sidewalks, or on the steps of some monument. To the sojourner in the land, the facts appear to be that the workmen frequent the _gargotes_ much more to drink than to eat, that they spend a very important fraction of the day congregated around, or in, the cheap wine-shops of the neighborhood, and that they consume a highly unnecessary quantity of variously and fearfully colored cheap combinations of _alcool_.

In the strike referred to, the _terrassiers_, or diggers, who commenced it, had enough influence in the Conseil Municipal of Paris to get the increased wages for which they quit work, awarded them; but the other workmen, who struck for the cause of _solidarité_, were unsuccessful, and the great strike of all the railway employés throughout the nation, ostentatiously ordered by the _Syndicat Guérard_, and promptly met by the military occupation of all the stations and points of danger, was a complete failure.