Chapter IX: Part 9

A detailed report has been preserved, setting forth the condition of the streets of the capital, made by Anne de Beaulieu, Sieur de Saint-Germain, to the king, in April, 1636. Everywhere, _ordures_, _immondices_, _bouès_, and _eaux croupies et arrestées_, the latter proceeding from the broken sewers; in the quartier Saint-Eustache, the égouts were stopped up, as everywhere else, "which causes the aforesaid waters to stagnate and to rise nearly to the church of Saint-Eustache and to give forth such a stinking vapor, in consequence of the carriages, carts, and horses which pass through the aforesaid waters, which is capable of polluting the whole quarter, and the same rising and stagnating of water is caused in the Rue du Bout du Monde as far as the aforesaid Rue Montorgueil; and it is to be remarked that the stench of the aforesaid waters is much more stinking and infectious in this locality than in others, because of the butchers and pork-butchers who have their slaughter-houses on the aforesaid _esgout_ (the égout of the Rue Montmartre), and that the blood and the garbage and other matters proceeding as much from the aforesaid slaughter-houses as from the sweepings of the houses."

In 1670, the city established the two pumps at the Pont Notre-Dame to raise the river-water, which, elevated "to the height of sixty feet and to the quantity of eighty inches, was conducted into different quarters of the city by pipes six inches in diameter." Two mills which were standing on this site were purchased by the city, which diminished considerably the expense and hastened the completion of the work. These pumps were enclosed in a building of the Ionic order of architecture, the door of which was decorated with a medallion of Louis XIV, and with two figures sculptured in bas-relief by Jean Goujon, one representing a naiad, and the other personifying a river. These had previously ornamented an edifice in the Marché Neuf which had been demolished. An inscription by the poet Santeuil completed the decoration of this building. These pumps were restored and reconstructed in 1708, and finally abandoned in 1854.

The most important reformation effected in the eighteenth century was the reconstruction, throughout its whole length, of the great main sewer and the construction of a reservoir for the water with which to flood it. This was decided upon in 1737, and completed in 1740. Sewers were constructed also in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple and Rue de Turenne, the open ditch Guénégaud was covered over, and the Invalides and the École militaire were supplied with water. A police ordinance of January 9, 1767, forbade the inhabitants to put out in the streets any broken bottles, crockery, or glassware, or to throw them out of the windows; all individuals were forbidden, also, by the eighth article, to throw out of the windows in the streets, "either by night or day, any water, urine, fecal matter, or other filth of any nature whatsoever, under penalty of a fine of three hundred livres." The Parisians objected strongly to this interference with their usual habits, and this question of sanitation remained long unsolved; in 1769, the Contrôleur Général, M. de Laverdy, proposed to establish at the street corners _brouettes_, or small, closed vehicles, in which could be found _lunettes_ for the benefit of the public. "The contractors promised to turn in a certain sum to the royal treasury," says the author of the _Mémoirs secrets_, "which transformed the affair into an impost worthy of being compared to that which Vespasian laid upon the urine of the Romans."

This idea, much derided at the time, was the germ of the modern _cabinets inodores_, those very useful institutions which do so much to disfigure the streets of Paris. In 1845, small cabinets of this species, mounted on wheels, could be seen on the Place de la Concorde, drawn about by a man, who stopped when signalled by the passer-by, but these soon disappeared. By a special law, passed February 4, 1851, the establishment of _lavoirs publics_ was authorized in several quarters of Paris, and these establishments have continued to multiply.

The problem of supplying Paris with good drinking water is not yet completely solved, though immense progress has been made within the last sixty years. The cholera epidemic of 1832 did much to arouse the municipal authorities to the necessity of radical reform both in the water-supply and in the system of sewage. At this date, the city was furnished by the pumps in the Seine, by the selenitic water drawn from Belleville, from the Pré-Saint-Gervais and from Arcueil, and from the canal de l'Ourcq,--inferior in quality and insufficient in quantity. The public fountains had long been the great resource of the inhabitants, and these were frequently architectural constructions worthy of their importance,--the Fontaine des Innocents, that of the Birague--now disappeared, that of the Arbre-Sec, of Gaillon and of Grenelle. The _porteurs d'eau_ were robust young fellows, mostly from Auvergne, who carried about the Seine water in two metal buckets by means of a neck yoke, and delivered it in the loftiest houses. At night, the water-casks, always filled, were stationed at various points, so as to be available in case of fire;--the first water-carrier who reached the scene of conflagration received a reward of twelve francs. The _eau de Seine_, filtered, was retailed at ten centimes the _voie_, or two pailfuls, of ten or fifteen litres, twenty times the price it is to-day; the poor preferred to use the water just as it came from the river, polluted as it was by the sewage.

As late as 1608, the only resource available outside the Seine water and that of wells was that furnished by the two little aqueducts of Belleville and the Pré-Saint-Gervais, constructed by Philippe-Auguste about the beginning of the thirteenth century. This supply was called _les Eaux du Roi_, and was dispensed graciously by the monarch to the grand seigneurs and the rich monasteries. The aqueduct of Belleville, which was falling into ruin, was partly reconstructed by the _prévôt_ of the merchants in 1457. Henri IV, in 1598, granted the first concession for a fixed price, which was the origin of the custom of paying for the municipal water-supply. At the end of the eighteenth century, the city was furnished by the "Eaux du Roi," which included that brought by the aqueduct of Arcueil and drawn from the _pompe de la Samaritaine_ (1606-1608); and by the "Eaux de la Ville," from the aqueduct of Belleville and the pompes Notre-Dame. The Eaux du Roi were ceded outright to the city in 1807; their administration is confided to the Préfet of the Seine, under the authority of the Minister of the Interior.

In 1802, the first attempt to seriously increase the volume of water supplied the city was made by drawing on the little river Ourcq. This canal brings a supply to the Bassin de la Villette, which serves as a reservoir to distribute it through Paris by means of the aqueduct of the Ceinture and large mains. The necessity of securing a larger supply, and a much purer one, was strongly felt by Baron Haussmann, who did so much for the embellishment of the city during the Second Empire, and in conjunction with the Engineer-in-chief of the navigation of the Seine, M. Belgrand, the present system was inaugurated. The latter found means of solving the problem after a careful study, in 1854, of the basin of the Seine. The bed of gypsum on which Paris is built furnishes neither water of a good drinking quality nor sources high enough to bring it into the city at the requisite altitude; it was therefore necessary to go outside this basin, extending from Meulan to Château-Thierry. At present, Paris is furnished with potable water by three aqueducts,--that of the Dhuis, a hundred and thirty-one kilomètres in length, constructed from 1862 to 1865, running from a source nearly due east of the city; that of the Vanne, a hundred and eighty-three kilomètres, 1866-1874, from the southeast, and that of the Avre, a hundred and eight kilomètres, 1890-1893, from the west. A fourth is to be built, of a length of seventy-two kilomètres, which will draw its supply from the valley of the Loing and the Lunain, a little west of Vanne.

When the city was enlarged by the annexation of the surrounding communes, in 1860, the municipal administration signed a contract with the _Compagnie générale des eaux_, which then held similar contracts with several of the communes both within and without the walls. By this, the city obtained the control, not only of its own water-supply and distribution, but also of that previously established by the company. The general management of the distribution is in the hands of the Compagnie, which collects the subscriptions, constructs branch pipes from the public conduits to the façade of the dwelling to be served, and turns the gross receipts into the municipal treasury, less its commission. To it, or to the _bureaux d'inspection_, all complaints are to be addressed. The purer _eaux de source_, brought by the aqueducts, are reserved for domestic use; the _eaux de rivière_, from the Seine and the Marne, are elevated to the altitude requisite to serve the higher quarters of the city by eleven _usines_, within and without the walls. The river-water is served by means of gauges and meters; the eau de source by meters only, which are officially examined and verified by the Municipal Laboratory, established in the Palais du Bardo, in the Pare Montsouris. This laboratory also analyzes this water, that of the drains, the sewers, and the wells, and reports to the municipal administration. With a view to the diffusion among the people of correct hygienic ideas, the Préfet of the Seine appointed, March 21, 1898, a commission of savants, architects, and hygienists to draw up a series of measures the most practical available for rendering dwelling-houses healthful.

The general distribution is effected from the eighteen reservoirs fed by these various sources; the eau de source is furnished on the public streets by six hundred and seventy-three fountains established against walls, etc., and by ninety-seven of the "Wallace fountains;" the water of the Ourcq and of the rivers is furnished by thousands of _bouches d'eau_, on the sidewalks, in the streets, etc., for service in case of fire, watering the streets, the innumerable lavoirs, etc. The monumental fountains, such as those of the Place de la Concorde and du Châtelet, which play every day from ten in the morning to six in the afternoon, are furnished by the canal de l'Ourcq, whilst that of the Trocadéro and its cascade, that of the Place d'Italie, and the luminous fountain of the Champ de Mars, which function only on fête-days and Sundays, are supplied by the Seine water. The fountains of the Luxembourg are fed by the Arcueil aqueduct. The water-pipes throughout the city are generally carried in the upper part of the égouts,--on curved shelves in the smaller ones, and on upright stems carrying a curved holder in the larger ones. In the grand _galerie du Boulevard Sebastopol_, for example, the water of the Ourcq is carried on one side in an eighty-centimètre main, and that of the Seine on the other in a main one mètre, ten, in diameter.

After a drawing by G. Maréchal.]

When the canal de l'Ourcq was first opened, the work was carried out by a company to which was granted the right of navigation on the new channel, connected with the Seine by the canals Saint-Martin and Saint-Denis, but in 1876 the city of Paris repurchased this concession from the canal company. A supply is also drawn from several important artesian wells in different localities,--that of Grenelle, in the Place de Breteuil, driven between 1833 and 1852, draws the water from a depth of five hundred and forty-nine mètres and elevates it to a height of seventy-five. This supply is turned into that of the Ourcq. The artesian well of the Butte aux Cailles, begun in 1863, was resumed in 1892 and is just being terminated; the depth attained is some six hundred mètres. That of Passy, 1855-1860, somewhat less deep, supplies the lakes of the Bois de Boulogne; that of the Place Hébert, 1863-1893, seven hundred and eighteen mètres in depth, furnishes some large ponds in the neighborhood.

Among the great reservoirs, the most noticeable is that of Montmartre, rising high by the side of the church of the Sacré-Coeur, and containing within its gray walls no less than three lakes, one above another. The largest of all these storage basins in the city is that of the Vanne, at the side of the principal entrance to the Parc Montsouris; in its vast, vaulted enclosure, covered with turf, may be stored two hundred and fifty thousand cubic mètres of water. Visitors are admitted to the under vault, where, by the light of torches, the enormous walls and the innumerable columns that sustain this weight are dimly visible. The water of the Avre, drawn from the two sources of the Vigne and Verneuil, is to be stored in the still larger reservoir on the heights of Saint-Cloud, similar in construction and now nearly completed. Each of the three sections in which it is built will contain a hundred thousand cubic mètres.

The ancient mediæval methods have all been put away, the inevitable little open gutter running down the middle of the street--celebrated by Boileau and Mme. de Staël, and many others--has long since disappeared, but the water-supply is not yet entirely adequate, and the citizens may still suffer for the lack of a pure liquid to drink,--as they did through so many centuries. It not infrequently happens, as it did in the early autumn of 1898, that several quarters of the city are simultaneously deprived of eau de source, and compelled to use the river-water alone. Every effort is made to avert this--as it is rightly considered--calamity, the streets are placarded with official notices warning the inhabitants of the approaching curtailment of their supply, and they are notified in a similar manner when the scarcity is over. Two solutions have been proposed for this insufficiency, both of them involving such heavy expense that the municipality shrinks from adopting either;--the first, to supply every dwelling with a double set of pipes, one carrying the pure water of the aqueducts, and the other the river-water, forced up into the upper stories; the second is to go as far as the lakes Neuchâtel, or Geneva, for an uncontaminated supply. The complete application of the _tout à l'égout_ system has been delayed by the want of the greatly-increased volume of water necessary for its application, and strong petitions have been presented demanding the postponement of the application of the law of 1894. The present supply is about a hundred and twenty-four litres of eau de source and ninety-six of eau de rivière daily for each inhabitant, but in summer this amount may become greatly diminished. Paris thus stands second in the amount of daily water-supply in the European capitals,--the figures ranging from Rome with four hundred and fourteen litres per capita, daily, to Constantinople with fifteen. London has only a hundred and seventy-three for each inhabitant daily; and Berlin, seventy-three, next to the Turkish capital. The figures for American cities are very much higher,--New York, three hundred and fifty-nine; Boston, three hundred and sixty-three; Philadelphia, six hundred; Chicago, six hundred and thirty-six, and Buffalo, eight hundred and forty-five (September, 1898).

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Another grave evil produced by an insufficient water-supply is the lack of pressure in the pipes in case of fire, and the possible lack of water itself. The number of _bouches d'incendie_, or fire-plugs, which it is proposed to raise to eight thousand, placed a hundred mètres apart, in all the streets of the city, is as yet far from attaining that figure. The infrequency of serious fires in the capital is, however, very noticeable when compared with the losses of American cities. Various causes contribute to this result: the solid character of the dwelling-houses generally, especially in the older quarters of the city--the handsome, new apartment-houses that have been put up in such numbers of recent years in the neighborhood of the Arc de l'Étoile are, very many of them, much less well built; the general absence of furnaces and of those overwrought fires to which the severity of his climate incites the American citizen; the total absence of buildings of an inordinate height, and, in modern times, the much more restricted use of electricity and the consequent diminution of that too frequent danger of the present day, "defective insulation." The fire service is, also, very efficient; the brass helmets of the _pompiers_ are as inseparable from any public performance, theatrical or musical, as the uniforms of the Garde Républicaine; these faithful sentinels are on duty behind the scenes as well as before them, and even up in the "flies," where, before the introduction of electricity, they were obliged to pass several hours in a temperature of, frequently, thirty-five degrees Centigrade, ninety-six Fahrenheit. At present, the fire department of Paris has adopted most of the modern improvements common to other civilized capitals, and the details of its service differ from those with which we are familiar principally in the military character given it.

The regiment of Sapeurs-Pompiers is, in fact, a regiment of infantry, lent to the city of Paris by the Minister of War. It is paid out of the municipal budget, with the exception of the pensions of the Legion of Honor, the military medal, and the retired list, which are the charge of the State. The regiment is composed of two battalions, of six companies each, with a total strength of seventeen hundred men. The pay of the men and their indemnities are the same as for the regiments of infantry in garrison in Paris, there are special privileges for the officers, and the quality of the recruits, especially with regard to their physique, is maintained at a very high standard. Their bravery, their efficiency, and their devotion are equal to those which are displayed so frequently by this well-organized service in other large cities, and are equally appreciated by the public; when, at the annual review at Longchamps on the day of the national fête, the regiment of sapeurs-pompiers defiles before the reviewing-stand, the great wave of applause and recognition which envelops it, drowning the other cheers in its roar, betokens the intimate appreciation of the Parisian, of high and low degree, of these unpretentious heroes.

By the new organization of this service, now in process of completion, the city is divided into twenty-four "zones," in the centre of each of which is a post of men and material, known as a _centre de secours_. The smaller posts, scattered through the city, in case of fire, notify by telephone these central stations and the état-major of the regiment, adjoining the Préfecture de Police; if the fire is of sufficient importance, the centre de secours sends a reinforcement and the steam fire-engine, the _pompe à vapeur_, but in very many cases the service of the latter is not needed. Its appearance in the streets is comparatively rare, and it is seldom driven at the mad gallop of the American machines. Moreover, its whistle is the curious thin treble so common in European motor engines, railroad and other. The old-fashioned hand-pumps have almost completely disappeared, with the exception of some localities like the Butte Montmartre, too steep to be approached by horses. In the central stations, the arrangements are those generally adopted nowadays to secure the quickest possible service,--even to the harness suspended from hooks in the ceilings to be dropped on the horses' backs, and the metal pole down which the men slide from their sleeping-rooms above.

After a drawing by M. Carney.]

For particular service, details for the theatres, balls, private clubs, etc., the number of men is fixed by the Préfet de Police, and there is extra pay in all these cases. The department is also called upon in case of street accidents, falling buildings, asphyxia in sewers, etc. The service material includes special apparatus for respiration in cellars, basements, etc., where the presence of gas or smoke is to be apprehended; and the great ladder, carried on a special truck, has a length of twenty mètres, greater than the average height of the Parisian houses. It is stated that the time allowed to elapse between the receipt of an alarm in the stations and the departure for the fire is often under a minute, and never exceeds two; in 1896, the time between the alarm and the attack of the fire was less than five minutes in ten hundred and seventy-nine fires out of a total of twelve hundred and four. In seven hundred and eighty-four cases, in the same year, the conflagration was completely extinguished in five minutes, and the very longest fire lasted six hours and a half.

At the entrance of each of the twelve casernes, or barracks, of the regiment, the names of the officers and soldiers who have been killed in the discharge of their duty are engraved on a slab of black marble, the Golden Book of the regiment. In the court of the état-major the names of the forty sapeurs-pompiers who have thus died since 1821, are engraved on a marble panel. In his order of the day, March 11, 1888, "the colonel informs the regiment, with profound grief, of the deaths of Corporal Toulon and former sergeant Sixdenier, who perished yesterday, at noon, victims of their devotion, in endeavoring to save an imprudent workman who had descended, without taking precautions, into an excavation of the Rue des Deux-Ponts." Three citizens were also asphyxiated in trying to save him, two of whom died; "and the deaths of Sixdenier and Toulon will be for all another and a grand example to add to the history of the regiment."

A Parisian merchant or manufacturer, Dumourrier-Duperrier, in 1699, furnished the first effective, organized system of combating fires in the city, and in 1717 he received, by letters-patent, the direction of the _Compagnie de Garde-Pompes_, the origin of the present organization. In 1792, the total effective of this force was two hundred and sixty-three men, officers included, with forty-four force-pumps, twelve suction-pumps, and forty-two casks. The men were provided with uniforms and, later, armed with sabres; in the year IX of the Republic, the corps, then four hundred strong, was placed under the direction of the Préfet de police, under the general administration of the Préfet de la Seine. The frightful conflagration which ended the fête given by the Austrian ambassador, Prince von Schwartzenberg, to the Emperor, in honor of his marriage with Marie-Louise, in 1810, awoke public attention to the insufficiency of the arrangements for extinguishing fires, and in the following year measures were taken to secure a larger authority and more energetic action. Napoleon decided that the gardes-pompes should be put on a strictly military footing; an imperial decree of September 18, 1811, created a battalion of sapeurs-pompiers consisting of four companies with thirteen officers and five hundred and sixty-three men. For the first time, they were armed with muskets, and as a military force were held as an auxiliary in the police service and in the maintenance of public order. One of the articles of this decree provided for the payment of this force by the city until the establishment of a company to insure against fire,--which was held to foreshadow an intention to place this expense, at least in part, upon these companies, and thereby relieve the municipal budget.

During the Revolution of 1848, the provisory government thought it prudent to deprive the pompiers of their muskets; and in April, 1850, the President of the Republic disbanded the battalion and reorganized it, retaining a small proportion of the former members. Down to this date, it had been recruited from the engineers and the artillery of the army, but since then, from the infantry only. In 1860, the annexation of the banlieue necessitated a new reorganization; the successive augmentations of the force brought its total effective, in 1866, up to a regiment of twelve hundred and ninety-eight men, divided into two battalions of six companies each. The efficiency of the organization was greatly augmented by the introduction of steam fire-engines in 1873.

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By the law of December 29, 1897, all the communes of France were authorized to suppress their octroi duties upon "hygienic beverages," wines, ciders, beers, perry, hydromel, and mineral waters, and replace them by others, after December 31, 1898. As the entrance duty upon these _boissons hygiéniques_ constituted a very important fraction,--in Paris, in 1895, sixty-eight million five hundred thousand francs out of a grand total of a hundred and fifty-five million six hundred and one thousand,--the question of supplying this deficiency in the municipal budget is exciting discussion. In case the octroi is not suppressed altogether, the communes are obliged to diminish the tax in certain proportions, according to their population and their locality,--the cider-producing departments standing on a different footing from the wine-growing ones. To replace the octroi, they are given their choice of five other taxes--upon alcohol, or upon horses, dogs, billiards, clubs, and various other articles of luxury. It was generally predicted in Paris that the consumer of alcoholic beverages would not experience any benefit from the removal of this tax.

Under the ancient régime, the octroi, like most other imposts and duties, was in the charge of the _fermiers généraux_, who obtained the royal authorization to enclose Paris within a wall to facilitate its collection. Consequently, one of the first manifestations of the Revolution was the demolition of these barrières by the people, on the very day of the taking of the Bastille. On the 1st of May, 1791, at midnight, all the gates of Paris were thrown open to the hundreds of vehicles, boats, and barges which had been waiting for weeks for this moment of free entry; a triumphal mast was erected in honor of the Assemblée and to celebrate the abolition of "the most odious of tyrannies;" the National Guard, under Lafayette's orders, paraded around the demolished barriers in the midst of the universal rejoicing. But, seven years later, the necessities of the municipal finances constrained many of the thus emancipated cities, Paris included, to return to the system of levying a tax on articles entering their gates, and the masons continued the work of enclosing the capital again within walls.

After a drawing by L. Vauzanges.]

Many difficulties attended the levying of this impost; "as soon as night fell," says M. Maxime Du Camp, "the city was literally taken by assault; the tavern-keepers of all the villages of the suburbs set up their ladders against the city wall, and the casks of wine, the bottles of brandy, butcher's meat, pork and vinegar, were lowered by means of ropes to the confederates who were waiting for them inside, in the _chemin de ronde_. Should some ill-advised customs clerk undertake to interfere with these fraudulent practices, he was set upon, beaten, gagged, and the introduction of the prohibited commodities continued undisturbed. They did even better; they excavated tunnels, which, passing under the exterior boulevards, under the wall of fortification, under the chemin de ronde, opened communication between the inns of the banlieue and those of the city; it was a veritable pillage,--the octroi was sacked." These violent measures have been replaced in the present day by more suitable ones, and the _musée des fraudeurs_, in the administration centrale of the octroi, contains a very curious assemblage of objects used in this contraband service. Alcohol was the favorite object of smuggling, and it was carried into the city in rubber corsets, worn under the blouse, rubber petticoats which would contain as much as thirty litres of the liquid, and were known as _mignonnettes_, false backs, false calves, false stomachs, and false upper arms, mostly in zinc. The women would not hesitate to appear as _plantureuses_ wet-nurses, or as in an interesting condition; the vehicles were mined and hollowed with concealed receptacles, and even the collars of the harness; the blocks of granite, the rolls of carpet,--all the arts of the smuggler were employed. That very general popular disposition to consider the evasion of a customs duty as a trivial offence is as common in France as elsewhere.

At all the gates of the city, in the railway stations, and at the river entrances of the capital, the posts of the octroi are established, and the formula of address of the green-uniformed officials is generally the same: "You have nothing to declare?" Foreign visitors are especially advised against the carrying in their baggage of tobacco and matches, the manufacture of these being a government monopoly; French _allumettes_ are _very_ bad, but it is better to throw away your cherished boxes of neat wax-matches before entering the barriers. With these exceptions, the officials are tolerant of the introduction of contraband articles in small quantities,--a half-bottle of ordinary wine, two pounds of fish caught by hook and line, a pound of salt, a bundle of hay or straw, etc. The agents act under the authority of the Préfet of the Seine; the objects submitted to this duty, intended for local consumption, are designated by the Conseil Municipal and approved by the government. The officials have the right of search; dutiable objects to be carried through the city are entitled to "escort" by the agents of the octroi, or they may pay the tax at the entrance with the privilege of having it refunded when leaving. All the communes of the Department of the Seine, considered as the banlieue of Paris, have the right of levying an entrance duty upon brandies, spirits, and liquors. The penalties provided for smuggling are the confiscation of the article and of the means used in its transportation; a fine of from a hundred to two hundred francs, and even imprisonment, if the attempt has been made by means of escalade or subterranean proceedings, or with prepared methods of concealment. All dutiable articles must be declared, no matter how small the quantity carried.

As both the city and the State are interested in the collection of this tax, the agents have a double mandate to execute their duties, and the contraventions of the law are pursued at one time in the name of the public Treasury and the octroi, and at another in the name of the Préfet of the Seine. Each gate of the city has its peculiar class of produce to tax, according to the locality to which it gives entrance; and the daily receipts vary to an astonishing degree. At the Orléans dépôt, the duties on merchandise have reached a hundred thousand francs a day and fallen to five hundred; the Porte de Saint-Denis ranges from fifty thousand francs to four!

To the establishment of the _octroi municipal et de bienfaisance_ by the Directory is due that of the great dépôts or _entrepôts_ of wine and alcohol on the quais of the Seine,--the importers finding it very inconvenient to pay the duties upon all their casks on their first arrival. They are, therefore, allowed to store them, under the supervision of the octroi, and pay as they are sold. When the ancient corporation of the _crieurs jurés_ announced throughout the city the arrival of a shipment of wine, the purchasers would throng to the banks of the Seine; when Louis XIV granted the first authorization to establish a _halle aux vins_, on condition that the profits should be divided with the Hôpital Général, the site selected was the Quai Saint-Bernard, the entrepôt of Bercy being then a market outside the city walls. The latter, on the site of the ancient Halle des Hôpitaux of the seventeenth century, developed greatly after its incorporation within the city limits; it is at present divided into two sections, _Le Grand Bercy_ and _Le Petit Château_. The city is the proprietor, and rents spaces to applicants, generally for a year at a time. The octroi is stationed at every gate of exit, and at numerous posts within the enclosure. Not only is the wine stored here, but it is blended and assorted in great tuns, and there is also storage for alcohol, liquors of all kinds, and oil. The huge enclosure is very carefully policed, not only for the detection of thieves, but also of fraudulent practices; at night there are four rounds, of which the second and third are made by guardians armed with revolvers (a recent innovation), and accompanied by eight shaggy watch-dogs.

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Among the scientific establishments of the city may be mentioned the observatory established on the top of the Tour Saint-Jacques, the beautiful fragment remaining of the old church of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, demolished in 1789. In the vaulted open chamber of the base of the tower stands a statue of Pascal, who, from the top of it, repeated his experiments on the weight of the air; and on this top--only fifty three mètres from the pavement--there has been in operation for the last seven or eight years a meteorological observatory. The varying conditions of the atmosphere, the winds, and the smoke which pollutes it, are closely investigated, weather predictions are hazarded, and the observers even descend into the sewer at their feet, under the Rue de Rivoli, to investigate and analyze the subterranean air. About 1885, M. Joubert, the director, established here a gigantic pendulum, to repeat the experiments made by Foucault at the Panthéon in 1851, and afterward a water-barometer, the only one in existence. The incongruity of this modern scientific apparatus on top of this mediæval tower, among the four monsters of the Evangelists at the corners, is rather amusing,--even the statue of Saint James himself carries placidly an anemometer on his back.

Another of these minor municipal details--and possibly a more affecting one--is the official Dépôt des Marbres, established adjoining the official museum of the Garde-Meuble at the end of the Rue de l'Université, by the side of the Champ de Mars. Here are deposited irreverently and in various stages of dilapidation all the official statues, royal, imperial, and republican, that have out-lived their day. "The marble of the statues of the State," said a cynical sculptor, "has the peculiarity of cracking after only a very short period of use." Some of these official marbles have had a longer period than others; but they all end here. Our illustration shows a corner of this depository,--at the angle, Napoleon III, sculptured by Iselin; behind him, a relief representing the return of the ashes of his great uncle; in the foreground, the Imperial eagle, with his fiery glance forever dimmed, and, at the left, a seated figure of Louis XVIII. Kings, potentates, and powers, official allegories, emblems, and symbols, are all set down here together, at the mercy of the weather. In the adjoining grand central pavilion are accumulated the official portraits of these departed rulers, including very many of the late Emperor and Empress,--"all the old rattles of France, all the playthings that she has broken."

KINGS IN EXILE: DEPOSED STATUES IN THE GARDEN OF THE GARDE-MEUBLE DE L'ÉTAT, ON THE QUAI D'ORSAY.]

If the city is regardless of the effigies of her deposed rulers, she at least has some consideration for the living citizen who falls into trouble. The official Mont-de-Piété, or pawnbrokers' establishment, stands always ready to rescue him from the grasp of the usurer--provided he has some security of any kind to offer, and although its services are not altogether gratuitous, they are of very great benefit to the public. No private individual is allowed to make a business of lending money on personal objects. It was by letters-patent of the king, dated 9th December, 1777, that the original establishment was authorized, to be placed under the inspection of the Lieutenant Général of Police and of four Administrateurs of the Hôpital Général; the amount to be loaned to applicants was fixed at four-fifths of their value on objects of gold or silver, and at two-thirds on all others. The administrators were permitted to establish branch offices in different quarters of the city, and the central bureau was located in the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux, where, very much enlarged, it still is. This institution proved to be of the greatest service to the people, well-to-do as well as poor, but the undiscriminating Revolution promptly abolished it as a monopoly, and was forced to restore it under the Directory, May 22, 1797. By the law of February 4, 1799, no similar establishment could be opened without the consent of the government.

At its reconstitution under the Directory, it made its loans at the rate of thirty per cent., this was gradually reduced to twelve, and it was not until after the Revolution of 1830 that the figure was fixed at nine. At present, the interest and the charges amount to seven per cent. In the first century of its existence, from 1777 to 1877, the total amount of the loans advanced was two trillion three hundred and eight million six hundred and fifty-five thousand six hundred and ninety-six francs. The number of objects pledged was over a hundred and twelve million five hundred thousand, of which there were redeemed, or sold as forfeited, a hundred and ten million seven hundred and ninety thousand.

The first of the succursales, or branch establishments, was for a long time in the Rue Bonaparte, the ancient Rue des Petits-Augustins, in the neighborhood of the École des Beaux-Arts; in 1814, a royal ordinance authorized this succursale to enlarge itself, and granted to it an old building and a slice of the garden of the Musée des Monuments français, on several conditions, one of which was that it should transport to Père-Lachaise and reconstruct there the tomb of Héloise and Abélard, which was in the ceded portion of the garden. This was faithfully carried out, but in 1833 the State changed its mind, the cession was revoked, and the Mont-de-Piété was obliged to restore the ground and demolish its building, but was not reimbursed for its outlay on the tomb of the lovers. At present, the succursales are three in number, in the Rues de Rennes, Servan, and Capron, and there are bureaux auxiliaires for very nearly all the letters of the alphabet, by which they are designated. These latter have no storage-room, and consequently are unable to deliver an object redeemed until the following day; the transportation of these pledges through the streets is effected in the company's own wagons, and with every precaution against loss. In the auxiliary bureaux, or bureaux of the quarter, no loan is made for a greater sum than five hundred francs, while in the central establishment the limit is ten thousand francs, but all the regulations are otherwise the same; only one style of ticket is used, and this varies in color according to the year, being white, pink, yellow, green, etc., in sequence.

By the terms of the present regulations of the establishment, the object offered as a pledge is appraised by eight official _commissaires-priseurs_ who are responsible for the deficiency in case the object, being neither renewed nor redeemed, is sold at public auction at less than their valuation. As may be supposed, they take care to guard against this eventuality,--the amount to be loaned on each pledge being the same proportion of its value as that fixed by the ordinance of 1777. The disappointment of the borrower at the inadequate sum offered him is not considered; but it has been proposed to establish by law a percentage nearer the actual market value of the security. The borrower is also subject to a tax,--of one per cent. on the sum he receives, without regard to the duration of the loan, and of six per cent. additional,--three for interest and three for running expenses. This last is calculated proportionally on the sum received and on the length of time the pledge remains unredeemed, counted by fortnights; loans of three, four, and five francs, not remaining unredeemed longer than two months, are not subject to this six per cent. tax.

Careful precautions are taken against the Mont-de-Piété being made a receptacle for stolen goods. The applicant for a loan must be known and have a permanent residence, or be vouched for by some one fulfilling these requirements; a married woman must bring the authorization of her husband, and no loans are made to minors. If the employés have any reason to suspect the integrity of the applicant, his loan is refused until he furnishes more satisfactory guarantees. In one year the number of watches recognized as stolen was two hundred and fifty, out of a total of three hundred and fifty thousand received. Loans are made for a year, at the longest, but in practice two months of grace are added; if at the end of this period the object is not redeemed, it is sold at public auction. Some of these pledges have been in the establishment for forty, forty-five, and fifty years, and very many for twenty,--constantly renewed and never redeemed. When sold, the surplus or _boni_ remaining after deducting all charges is held at the disposal of the owner of the pledge for three years, and then turned over to the administration of the Assistance Publique.

By the law of July 25, 1891, this establishment is permitted to advance money, at its usual rates, on French Rentes and other bonds and securities authorized by an ordinance of the Préfet of the Seine. These loans are not to exceed five hundred francs each, nor to be less than three francs, and the duration of the loan is for six months, unless renewed. The capital on which the Mont-de-Piété does business is borrowed from stockholders or subscribers, to whom it pays interest; one of the principal of these is the Comédie-Française, which, by the famous decree of Moscow, is required to place two millions of its surplus in this official benevolent institution.

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Much the most important public service of Paris is the Bureau of _Postes et Télégraphes_, the administration of which is confided to a Sous-Secrétaire d'État, and which employs, altogether, nearly thirteen thousand _fonctionnaires_, male and female. Of the efficiency of the postal service, the Parisians are justly proud; the telephone service, on the contrary, since it has passed under the management of the government, is a source of more earnest and heated complaint on the part of the unfortunate subscribers than even is usual in other lands before this aggravating mouthpiece and tube. The earliest postal service in France, according to the historians, was maintained by the Université for the benefit of its students, who were enabled to correspond with their relatives by means of messengers; this exclusive privilege, long preserved, was finally combined with the service which Louis XI established to serve the ends of his crooked policy. The modern postal service may be said to date from the reign of Louis XIII; and, in its gradual development, has passed through much the same phases as in other countries. During the seventeenth century, the central office was located in some contracted quarters established in front of the colonnade of the Louvre, and was eventually transferred to the old hôtel in the Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau, constructed on the site of the ancient Hôtel de Flandres. Although enlarged by successive additions, this building never afforded sufficient facilities, and proposals to abandon it and construct another and more ample central office elsewhere were seriously debated from 1793 to 1811, but the Corps Législatif was unwilling to incur so great an expense. On the night of the 7th-8th of August, 1880, the central office for Paris and the department of the Seine was established in temporary quarters in the Place Carrousel, and the demolition of the ancient building, preparatory to the construction on its site of a much larger and more efficient one, was commenced. The new Hôtel des Postes et Télégraphes was completed four years later.

After a drawing by Pierre Vidal.]

An ordinance of 1692 gives the details of the commencement of the _Petite Poste_, or daily collection of letters: "there will be established six boxes from which the letters will be gathered every day at noon precisely and at eight o'clock in the evening in winter, and nine o'clock in summer, so exactly that after these hours in the evening the letters which may arrive will remain for the mail offices following, to wit:"--and the six localities of these offices are given. In 1759, a royal ordinance decreed the establishment in the city of different _bureaux_ to effect the transportation from one quarter to another of letters and small packages; and on the 1st of August this service commenced,--there were nine distributions a day, by means of a hundred and seventeen _facteurs_, or carriers, and the postage was required to be paid in advance. The departure of the mail-coaches from the old post-office in the Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau, at six o'clock each morning, was a daily event of importance,--the diligence drivers prided themselves on issuing from the cour du Meridien into the cour de l'Horloge and from that into the street at the full gallop of their four horses; unfortunately, the street was very narrow, and so was the gateway of exit; it is recorded that the proprietor, named Florent, of the shop immediately opposite this exit, which was, and still is, a hair-dressing establishment, was enabled to retire with a fortune as the result of the numerous reimbursements he received for his broken shop-windows, dashed in by the mail coaches unable to make quickly enough the sharp turn to the right or the left in the narrow street.

The arrangements for mailing and receiving letters in Paris are, in general, very satisfactory,--the branch post-offices are over a hundred in number, and they will receive not only letters and mailable packages, but telegrams. They do a very large business, and are generally thronged all day in the popular quarters,--the registry department being greatly in favor. At night, they are recognizable by their blue lanterns, and there are also, since 1894, auxiliary offices in certain shops designated by blue signs. The letter-boxes, set in the wall of the building, so that letters and packages may be mailed from the street, are usually four in number, one each for Paris, the departments, foreign mail, and for printed matter. Stamps may be bought and letters mailed also in very many of the small tobacco-shops, in public buildings, and in the dépôts of the railways and the tramways of the suburbs. There are eight collections and distributions a day, on work-days, and five on Sundays and fête-days; the facteur, or carrier, has discharged his duty when he has left the mail with the concierge of the building, and its final delivery rests entirely with the latter functionary. These facteurs, who are generally intelligent and conscientious, wear the inevitable uniform of all French officials, and carry their mail in an absurd stiff little leathern box, suspended in front of their stomachs by a strap around their necks. Their distributing matter never seems to exceed the capacity of this box,--ranging in quantity from a third to a tenth of the ordinary burden of a New York letter-carrier.

A more rapid method of distribution, for which a higher rate is charged, is by means of the pneumatic tubes which traverse the city, mostly through the égouts, and which have their termini in the branch post-offices. Envelopes or enclosures sent by this medium must contain neither valuable objects nor hard and resisting bodies. The service of _colis postaux_, so called although there is no necessary connection with the post, and which corresponds nearly with the American express system, is, for Paris, in the hands of a director to whom it is a concession by the Administration des Postes, and for the departments and the colonies in those of the railway companies and the subsidized maritime companies. The inevitable conflict with the workings of the octroi interferes very seriously with the promptness and efficacy of this service, and in the summer of 1898 the complaints of the despoiled patrons were unusually loud and deep. In their search for contraband articles, the octroi inspectors open a large number of these packages received from the departments and containing in very many cases consignments of wine, game, patés, and other delicacies,--the closing up of these numerous cases is left to the employés of the railways, and the result has been a perfect pillage. In vain do the consignees protest,--the Compagnies interpose the interminable delays of corporations, and justice is not to be had.

The annual receipts of the Paris post-office--population in 1896, 2,543,000--are given as 178,000,000 francs; of the telegraph, 37,000,000; of the telephone, 9,000,000; a total of 224,000,000 francs. The expenses, borne by the post-office alone, are 178,000,000, so that the annual profits are 46,000,000 francs, or about $9,200,000. For New York City, the figures, as given by the postmaster for the year 1898, are, total receipts, $8,564,247.03; expenditures, $3,398,071.38; net revenue, $5,166,175.65. The postage rate in France, for the city or the departments, is fifteen centimes for fifteen grammes.

In 1879, the telephone service was introduced in Paris, and was divided among three companies,--the société Edison, the société Gower, and the société Goulevin et Compagnie. The following year, these united in one, the _Société générale des Téléphones_, and in 1889 the State took possession. The wires were at first carried on poles through the streets, but the municipality soon ordered them underground. As the invention was introduced from abroad, it brought with it the English "Hello!" necessary to open communication with the distant correspondent, and the French subscriber consequently begins with "_Allô! Allô!_"--which is as near as he can come to it. It may be added, that he usually introduces a great many more interjections as he proceeds.

* * * * *

The recent tragic and very sudden transfer of the Executive power of the French Republic exemplified in a most striking manner the advantages--at least, for an inflammable nation--of the constitutional method of electing a President. Instead of a heated and disturbing political campaign, extending over six months of every fourth year, and frequently carefully planned long in advance by the actual incumbent, the chief Executive of France is elected promptly by the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies reunited in Assemblée Nationale and sitting at Versailles. One of these bodies, at least, the Chambre, enjoys no more of the public confidence than do the national legislators of the great American Republic; but the Presidents of the Third Republic, so far, at least, may be said to have made quite as dignified and worthy representatives of popular suffrage as those who have occupied the White House at Washington during the same period. Instead of the two great parties into which Anglo-Saxon suffrages are usually divided, the parliaments of European nations generally represent a great number of small political divisions, differing fiercely on minor points of political doctrine, and thus, possibly, presenting a fairer average representation of the whole people at any one given time than the others in which Conservatives or Republicans may be enjoying an accidental or temporary majority.

In case of the death of the Président de la République, the Chambre and the Sénat are immediately convoked, as in February, 1899; should he live to fill out his legal term of seven years, the two bodies are summoned to elect his successor at least a month before the expiration of his term. He is eligible for re-election. His carefully limited powers are much like those of a constitutional sovereign; he has power to originate laws, in conjunction with the two Chambers; he has the pardoning power, the direction of the army and navy, he presides at all the national solemnities; the envoys and ambassadors of all foreign powers are accredited to him. He negotiates and ratifies treaties, and communicates them to the two Chambers as soon as, in his judgment, the interests and the safety of the State will permit; he cannot declare war without the assent of the Chambers; with the consent of the Senate, he may dissolve the Chamber of Deputies. He is responsible only in case of high treason, cannot be impeached but by the Chamber of Deputies, and cannot be tried except by the Senate sitting as a High Court of Justice. He receives from the State an annual allowance of a million two hundred thousand francs.

The legislative power is divided between the two assemblies,--the Chamber, elected by universal suffrage, and the Senate, by a restricted suffrage. The financial budget must originate in the Chamber, and the two bodies, beginning their sessions on the second Tuesday of January, must sit at least five months every year. Their adjournment, which must be on the same day, is pronounced by the President, who communicates with them through the ministers of his cabinet, and the frequent _crises ministérielles_, which have done so much to discredit the Third Republic, have been caused by the responsibility of these ministers to the Chambers for the general politics of the government. If they are defeated by ever so small a minority on any question which they have made a "vote of confidence," they place their resignations in the hands of the President, who accepts them, and sends for one of the leaders of the victorious opposition to form a new cabinet. This cabinet, in its turn, can only hold power so long as it can command the support of a certain combination of parties, and, as these combinations shift, so do the ministries.