Old and New Paris Part 41

"Get up," he said, "and let us go out together." His friend asked why he wanted him, and what urgent affair had brought La Fontaine out of bed at such an hour. "I will tell you," was the answer, "after we have gone hence." Poignant, quite mystified, arose, dressed, and then inquired to what place the poet was taking him. "You will soon see," replied La Fontaine, who, when they had both quitted the house and reached a sufficiently retired spot, said with solemnity, "My friend, we must fight." Poignant, more puzzled than ever, asked in what way he had offended. "Besides," he added, "I am a soldier, and you scarcely know how to hold a sword." "No matter," replied La Fontaine; "the public wishes me to fight you." Poignant, after protesting for a long time in vain, at length drew his sword from complaisance, and easily disarmed La Fontaine. Then he inquired the meaning of the whole affair. "The public declare," said La Fontaine, "that you come every day to my house to see, not me, but my wife." "My dear friend," returned Poignant, "I should never have suspected you of such a misgiving, and I promise henceforth never to set foot across your threshold." "On the contrary," said La Fontaine, shaking the captain by the hand, "I have done what the public wanted, and I now wish you to continue your visits to my house with more regularity than ever."

Let us conclude with an anecdote concerning another duel which the "public" would have liked to see fought, but which never came to pa.s.s, because the aggrieved party had a great weakness for keeping lead and steel out of his body. A certain marquis had been thrashed with a walking-stick, but showed no disposition to take vengeance on his castigator. "Why doesn't he appeal to arms?" people inquired--to which the witty Sophie Arnould replied: "Because he has too much good sense to take any notice of what goes on behind his back."

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

THE STUDENTS OF PARIS.

Paris Students--Their Character--In the Middle Ages--At the Revolution--Under the Directory--In 1814--In 1819--Lallemand--In the Revolution of 1830.

If art and fashion, industry and commerce, are chiefly represented on the right bank of the Seine, science and the schools have their headquarters on the left. The "Latin country" or "pays Latin" occupies a considerable portion of the territory known as the Rive Gauche, and gives to it a distinctive character. Latin, since the Revolution, has been no more the language of instruction in France that it is now in other countries, though in Hungary and Austrian Poland it was the language of the law-courts even until the revolutionary year of 1848.

The students of Paris have so interesting a history that the task of writing it in voluminous fashion was undertaken long ago by a very able writer, Antonio Watripon, whom death unfortunately prevented from completing his "Histoire politiques des ecoles et des etudiants."

Already in the reign of Charlemagne schools existed and learning flourished in the capital. At the commencement of the twelfth century Abailard grouped around him a large number of pupils; and not long after his time Paris students had so multiplied that in some quarters they outnumbered the townspeople, and lodging was scarcely procurable.

The schools were thrown open to the whole world, and foreigners coming to Paris to study were granted the same privileges as native scholars.

The Duke Leopold of Austria received his education there, and Charles of Luxemburg, King of Bohemia, and afterwards Emperor of Germany, took the Paris school, in which he had studied, as model for the one he afterwards founded at Prague. Before very long the students of Paris, spoilt by the special privileges which they enjoyed, gave rein to every whim and fancy which occurred to them. In the thirteenth century they nicknamed the townspeople, whom they despised for their ignorance, "cornificiens"; and the latter, jealous of the advantages conferred on the students, took their revenge by calling them "Abraham's oxen,"

and even "Balaam's a.s.ses." A writer of this period gives the students in general a most profligate character. Their reading was a farce.

"They preferred to contemplate the beauties of young ladies rather than those of Cicero." On the other hand the Abbe Leboeuf cites a letter in which, as a body, they are spoken of with the highest esteem. The truth, doubtless, is that then, as now, some students were serious, and others abandoned to idleness and folly. As early as the thirteenth century student-riots became so frequent in Paris that, the church in this matter supporting the State, all scholars were forbidden to carry arms under pain of excommunication. During the Carnival of 1229 a band of students, after having eaten and drunk at a tavern in the suburb of Saint-Marcel, then outside the walls, provoked a quarrel at the moment of paying, and beat the tavern-keeper and his wife. The neighbours put the aggressors to flight. Next day the students returned in great force, broke into the house, smashed up the furniture, set the wine running, and wounded several persons. The Provost of Paris hastened to the scene with his archers, and meeting a group of peaceable students who were innocent of the affair, swooped down upon them. Two were killed. The masters demanded reparation, but to no purpose. Then the schools were suspended, and Paris was deserted both by professors and students, who went to Rheims, Toulouse, Montpelier, already celebrated for its faculty of medicine, Orleans, and other towns, where the foundations of other universities were laid. The Paris University remained closed for two years. After the reopening of the schools new subjects of quarrel between the students and the townspeople, and between the students and the authorities, constantly arose. The right of fishing in one of the arms of the Seine was claimed by the students, or at least exercised by them until fines were imposed, which in most cases had to be recovered by legal process. The foreign students, moreover, who from the earliest times until now have always been admitted to the Paris schools on the most favourable terms, had disputes of their own; seldom with the other members of the university, but very often with the citizens and the officials.

As we leave the Middle Ages we find that the Paris students, whilst losing a good deal of their original character, preserve all their turbulence and want of discipline. At the fair of Saint-Germains in 1609 they abandoned themselves to all kinds of debauchery, and fought in companies with pages, lackeys, and soldiers of the guard. One lackey cut off a student's ears and put them in his pocket; after which the students pounced upon every footman or groom they came across, killing some and wounding others. The students of Louis XIII.'s reign are described as "more debauched than ever"; carrying arms, pillaging, killing, making love, and in order to support their excesses, robbing their relatives or even their professors.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAMILLE DESMOULINS.]

It was doubtless the schools, however, which chiefly contributed to make Paris the powerful and active agent of civilisation which that capital so early became. They formed a theatre of discussion for a vast laboratory of ideas. Many a student was beheaded, hanged, or burned in a wooden cage on accusations of heresy; for liberty of conscience, that is to say. "We should greatly deceive ourselves," says Antonio Watripon, "if we judged the students of other days by their external aspect--drunken challengers, beaters of tavern-keepers, brawlers in the Pre aux Clercs, ravishers of tradesmen's wives. It is always the same picture on the surface; but underneath there is something which is not at first perceived, and which is marching ever forward--thought! A poor student is persecuted by the parliament. The rector is called to the bar and commanded to imprison the suspected heretic, who, however, has the good fortune to find refuge in Saintonge. Soon the whole world will know that his name is Calvin. The Protestant books are burnt and the printers cast into the dungeons of the bishopric. These persecutions serve only to swell the ranks of the reformers."

The reputation of the Paris schools spread far and wide, and their civilising influence created inst.i.tutions of learning in foreign lands.

From the ranks of the Paris students in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries stepped forth artists and writers who have remained the glory of France.

A great number of students were initiated into freemasonry and the other secret fraternities which preceded the Revolution. They saluted the era of political emanc.i.p.ation with enthusiasm. The first actor in the great drama, Camille Desmoulins, had sat on the benches of the ecole de Droit.

Most of the orators or politicians of the great a.s.semblies were old students. In 1789 the students of law and medicine in the departments fraternised with those of Paris, so as to march hand-in-hand in the exploration of liberty and truth. Many scholars hastened to the menaced frontiers. On the 9th Thermidor a medical student named Soubervielle rallied around him the patriots of the schools, a large number of whom prepared, in insurrection, to fly to the a.s.sistance of those sacred principles which threatened to perish with the last of the Montaguards.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL.]

Under the Directory the generous impulses of a section of the studious youth were lost in the orgies of libertinism. The Imperial despotism weighed upon the students as upon the rest of the citizens. Nevertheless the Republican sentiment was by no means extinguished within them, nor did it fail to find expression amid those events which were the development of the vast revolutionary tradition.

The defence of Paris against the foreign invasion, in 1814, offered the students of the various schools, with those of the Polytechnic as leaders, an opportunity of proving their patriotism. In presence of the peril into which the insatiable ambition of Napoleon had thrown the nation, the Polytechnic students, with those of law and medicine, made up twelve batteries of artillery for the National Guard. The pupils of the veterinary school of Alfort particularly distinguished themselves by their splendid defence of Charenton. These, however, were but isolated examples. "History," writes Louis Blanc, "which soars high above the lies of party, will tell us that in 1814 Paris did not care to protect itself; that the National Guard, with the exception of a few true men, failed to do their duty; that the townspeople, with the exception of a small number of valorous students and of devoted citizens, fled before the invasion." In 1815 the students, called anew to the defence of the capital, were reconst.i.tuted into companies of artillery, and served beneath the walls of Paris.

At political junctures the students of Paris have seldom failed to a.s.sert themselves. The opposition of the younger generation to the Restoration had its origin in the Polytechnic School, which in 1816 refused to conform to certain religious observances. Fifteen pupils were expelled on the 12th of April, and next day the school was dissolved by the king.

In 1819, when the cry of "Liberty" was resounding through more than one European country, the Paris schools responded to the agitation. The lectures delivered by Nicholas Bavoux, professor of criminal law, caused between the Liberal students and certain Royalist auditors discussions which, but for the intervention of the dean and of armed force, would have degenerated into sanguinary conflicts. Bavoux's professorship was suspended and the school of law closed. Prosecuted in a criminal court, Bavoux was acquitted by the jury and found himself the hero of the hour. At Gren.o.ble, on 8th May, 1820, the law students profited by the arrival of the Duke of Angouleme to make a public manifestation, in which they endeavoured to drown the cry of "Vive le roi!" with that of "Vive la charte!" Every day large groups of students stationed themselves outside the Palais-Bourbon to cheer the deputies of the Opposition, defenders of electoral liberty. Driven back from the Quai d'Orsay by the gendarmerie, they rea.s.sembled on the Place Louis XV., still shouting for the charter. Again forcibly displaced, they repaired in a ma.s.s to the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where they fraternised with the working men. Thirty-five were arrested. On Sat.u.r.day, the third of June, new gatherings took place at the approaches to the Chamber in which the deputies sat. A descent was made upon them by the police. The students, who wore as their sign of recognition a white cravat as well as a buckle in front of their hats, rescued those of their friends who were taken prisoners. On the Place du Carrousel they s.n.a.t.c.hed from the hands of the body-guards by whom he had been seized one of their comrades named Lallemand. This young man, a law student of three-and-twenty, was at the selfsame instant struck by a bullet and killed. The death of Lallemand fanned the flame of rebellion. His corpse was transported to the Church of Bonne-Nouvelle, guarded by the scholars themselves. Next day it was borne to Pere-Lachaise by the two schools of medicine and law. Within the cemetery accents of vengeance and of liberty could be heard. The friends of the victim determined to raise a monument to his honour, and the subscription-lists which for this purpose were instantly opened by the schools, not only of Paris but of the provinces, showed that enough money could have been procured to erect to Lallemand a statue nearly as big as the Colossus of Rhodes. These incidents produced a burning discussion in the Chamber, where the schools found at least one eloquent champion in the person of M. Demarcay. "These youths," he said, "who, by their studies, their occupations, their emulation, would seem to belong to a ripe age of life, fill our schools and surrender themselves to the ardour of work and science. They have fire, you say, in their nature; they love liberty: and at what age would you wish men to love liberty and defend it with courage? Is it not the same fire and courage which you demand when you summon such youths to defend the country? Cease, then, to impute to them those disorders of which they have been the victim." Foy and Benjamin Constant spoke in the same strain. But the Commission of Public Instruction pa.s.sed a measure which excluded from the schools thirteen students of law and medicine; and one of these, Robert Lailavoix, suffered an imprisonment of two months.

The indignation thus excited amongst the scholars of Paris found an echo in the provinces. Not long afterwards some six hundred students were secretly formed into a military corps styled the Free Company of the Schools. For two months they were instructed in the use of arms.

The students, however, were Republican, whilst their leaders were Bonapartist; and the latter, seized at the last moment with a fit of discretion, refused to act. Otherwise the fiery youths who looked to them for guidance, and who had numerous sympathisers in the military, would have carried out their programme to the letter.

The first anniversary of the death of Lallemand reunited the Paris students into an enthusiastic federation. The funeral service having been forbidden, they affected to fix their rendezvous at the b.u.t.tes Chaumont; where at the price of their blood they had defended the capital against invasion seven years before. Forming themselves into a long file, they silently descended towards the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise. They found the gates shut. Then a remarkable scene occurred. A certain student, acting as orator, was hoisted by his comrades on to one of the highest walls in the cemetery, and spoke from this elevation as from an improvised tribunal. He invoked the shade of Lallemand, and called upon him to witness both the odious persecution which pursued his memory and the solemn oath which everyone took, in presence of his tomb, to avenge him or die as he had died. An electric thrill ran through the crowd; all fell on their knees in the dusty road, and bent their heads while the orator, turning towards the cemetery, bade Lallemand a last adieu. The column returned to Paris and defiled, bareheaded, along the Rue des Pet.i.ts-Carreaux, past the house of Lallemand. The victim's father appeared at one of the windows, with his hand pressed to his heart, to show how deeply he was affected by this public protestation.

Constantly engaged in political agitation, the students of Paris bore a formidable part in the Revolution of 1830. On the 26th of July the famous Ordonnances were issued. The same day secret meetings were held by the students, at which they resolved to take up arms. In the evening, at the Chaumiere ball, the quadrilles were stopped in virtue of the new decrees. A thrill of indignation ran through the a.s.sembly. The orchestra played the Ma.r.s.eillaise, and all present sang it in chorus.

Hands were grasped, and vows uttered to conquer or die for liberty. The day afterwards intrepid students denounced the ordonnances in the public streets and called the citizens to arms. The pupils of the Polytechnic School pa.s.sed the night in improvising implements of war, and with Vanneau, a bold spirit, at their head, scaled the walls and hurried to the barricades, where the students of the capital were mingled with the people. Already several had fallen dead. One student of medicine, named Papu, seeing his column, composed of youths and working men, disperse before a murderous musketry fire, sprang forward and cried--"I will show you how to die!" He was almost shattered to pieces, though he managed before expiring to gasp an exhortation to his comrades to continue the struggle. Rennes, his native town, honoured him with a monument. At the attack on the Hotel de Ville another medical student, Labarbe, had both his legs broken, dying two days afterwards from the effects of the amputation, which he had undergone with a pipe in his mouth. Many a deed of heroism was done at this juncture by the Paris students, fighting like the populace for a Republic, which they did not obtain, and for which a disappointing compromise was furnished in the person of Louis Philippe.

The political history, however, of the Paris students is too formidable to trace in anything like detail. In modern times these once ardent youths have shown themselves comparatively indifferent to politics, and have sought diversion from their studies rather in the cigar than in the sword or musket.

The Paris student's general history, like that of everyone and everything French, consists largely of anecdotes. One of the best is a legend of a medical student who was not accustomed to pay his landlady. Tired at length of waiting for her money, she paid him a visit at his rooms. The student, forewarned, received her with perfect self-composure. "Sir," she exclaimed without circ.u.mlocution, as she crossed his threshold, "pay me or go." "I prefer to go," was the reply.

"Very well then; go at once." "Precisely, madame; and I shall go all the faster if you will consent to a.s.sist me." Thereupon he went to his chest of drawers, and from the top drawer took out a large skeleton.

"Would you," he said, "be kind enough to place this at the bottom of my portmanteau?" "What is it?" cried the lady, retreating a few paces.

"What is it? Why, it is my first landlady. She had the indiscretion to demand three quarters' rent which I owed her, and then--mind you don't break it. It is No. 1 in my collection." "Sir!" exclaimed the lady, turning pale. The student, without replying, opened another drawer, and extracted a second skeleton. "This," he said quietly, "is my landlady of the Rue de l'ecole-de-Medecine, a most admirable woman, who, in like manner, had applied to me for two quarters' rent. Place it carefully on the other--it is No. 2. This," continued the student, "is No. 3, an excellent woman, whom I had ceased to pay. Let us now pa.s.s on to No. 4."

The landlady fled, and her tenant was never thenceforth inconvenienced with applications for rent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NOTRE DAME, FROM THE PONT SAINT-LOUIS.]

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

THE RAG-PICKER OF PARIS.

The Chiffonnier, or Rag-picker--His Methods and Hour of Work--His Character--A Diogenes--The _Chiffonnier de Paris_.

Perhaps the most distinct type of character in Paris is the chiffonnier.

Every evening, towards eight o'clock in the summer, and somewhat earlier in the winter, the streets of the capital are scoured by a cla.s.s of individuals of both s.e.xes, clad in sordid garments, who carry on their back a wicker basket, in their left hand a lantern, and in their right a stick with an iron hook at the end. A provincial or a foreigner might ask with curiosity what part these persons, so strangely armed, play in the social system; but Parisians, to whom they have long been familiar, and to whom they are indeed historical, know them as the chiffonniers or rag-pickers. An observer, if he follows one of these wretched adventurers, will see him stop at every dust-heap lying along the thoroughfares, previously to their being cleared away by the city scavengers. He rummages in these heaps, turning their contents over and over, and with the aid of his stick picks up and thrusts into his basket whatever objects will find a sale in his peculiar market. Not content with collecting those rags or chiffons from which he seems to have derived his name, he gathers up old papers, corks, bones, nails, broken gla.s.s, human hair, and even cats and dogs, which, contrary to the regulations, have been flung dead into the streets. Some of the more enterprising of these explorers will, in defiance of the law, strip the walls or h.o.a.rdings of their placards. Occasionally it happens that the rag-picker finds objects of value, silver spoons, jewels, or even bank-notes, which have accidentally got swept into the rubbish. In these cases he is obliged, under the severest penalties, to surrender the treasure-trove to the nearest commissary of police. The old papers and rags are employed in the manufacture of paper and cardboard; the gla.s.s is melted again; the bones are turned into animal black; the nails are thrown in with old iron; the cats and dogs are stripped of their skins, and the hair reappears--according to a vivacious, and, let us hope, imaginative writer--upon the heads of the fashionable, in waving tresses or other elegant forms of coiffure. But this human ferret, who may be seen every night at work in the corners of the Paris streets, is only the emissary of a more exalted chiffonnier: the lord of the iron crook, who does not quit his palace, but simply purchases the nightly harvests, which he afterwards "tests," sorts, and cla.s.sifies, so as to sell again to the various trades which may have a use for such merchandise.

Everything picked up serves some commercial purpose; each of those vile objects unearthed from the dust-heaps is a chrysalis to which industrial science will give an elegant form and transparent wings. The prices paid by manufacturers of paper and cardboard, who are the chief buyers of rag-pickers' produce, vary from something under a sou per pound for dirty old rags and papers, to five sous for rags of the very best description.

The rag-picker does not exercise too nice a faculty of discrimination whilst filling his basket. The sifting is the business of the "tester,"

a special functionary employed to cla.s.sify the harvest. He evolves order from the chaos of disgusting rubbish which the opulent rag merchant will presently convert into odourless gold. The professional "testers" enjoy but a short career. The scents exhaled by the acc.u.mulated abominations which they handle are so many virulent poisons. It is said that even the lamps go out in the horrible dens where they toil.

The chiffonnier who scours the streets is always a miserable object; the master chiffonnier who buys the contents of his basket is often a millionaire, and splashes with his carriage wheels as he returns from the theatre those wretches who next day will go and sell to him what the city has thrown into the gutter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A RAG-PICKER]

Upon the rag-pickers of Paris the law, as might be imagined, keeps an eye; and sundry ordinances regulating their profession have at different periods been issued. The oldest of these forbade them to wander in the Paris streets except by daylight, so that they might not be suspected of partic.i.p.ation in night robberies and brawls. In the present day the chiffonnier is required, whilst exercising his profession, to wear an official docket, duly numbered, and attached conspicuously to his indispensable basket. The munic.i.p.al law prohibits him from walking the streets between midnight and five in the morning. As the reaping of the gutter harvest begins at 8 p.m., and the scavengers do not clear the rubbish away till between 7 and 9 a.m., those rag-pickers who have been carried by their explorations too far from home are obliged to pa.s.s the interdicted hours in such filthy hovels as are left open for them.

The chiffonniers of Paris can boast a history. They have played a part in their time, and once they were even invested with civil functions, though these functions were of a sad nature. In 1826 M. Delavan commissioned them to kill in the streets all dogs they could find attached to bakers' and greengrocers' carts; and they executed the order with downright ferocity. In 1832, when the cholera invaded Paris, they figured amongst the licensed murderers who ma.s.sacred those luckless persons whom ignorance and superst.i.tion had accused of poisoning the fountains. At the same period they smashed a number of newly-invented dust-carts, intended to clear the streets instantly of rubbish, so that they could only explore it at the depot where it was shot. The rag-pickers won the day. The authorities yielded before their violence and projected the relegated reforms into the future.

No one would expect to find among the Paris chiffonniers a high moral standard; their work can scarcely have other than a degrading influence upon them. Their numbers are recruited as a rule from the most infamous regions of the capital, and from a social stratum only just above that of the vilest criminality. It has often been said that counts and marquises have sunk, by means of wine, cards, and so forth, into the ranks of the chiffonniers, even as a certain fraction of the English aristocracy are popularly supposed, after driving recklessly through life four-in hand, to end their career on the perch of a hansom cab. In London, it is true, such things have happened, and men of t.i.tle have been known to adopt even less heroic methods of livelihood than that of driving a hackney vehicle for hire; they have--there is at least one contemporary instance--ground barrel-organs. But these are the very rarest exceptions; and in Paris, although it is not theoretically impossible for an aristocrat to find himself reduced to the basket and crook of the rag-picker, such a case would be an exception infinitely rarer still. So disgusting an occupation would be absolutely the last to which a ruined gentleman would resort.

The chiffonnier, however, despised as he is, figures a good deal in literature. A moving drama from the pen of M. Felix Pyat, and a vaudeville by MM. Frederic de Courcy, Sauvage, and Bayard, have reproduced on the stage his manners and customs. One chiffonnier named Liard pa.s.sed for a philosopher, and has been treated as such by more than one writer, and by at least one distinguished artist. He had descended from a higher station in life, and had suffered misfortunes.

He would come out with Latin sentences on occasion. Scorning the wicker basket, he carried a simple wallet on his shoulder. Having collected his sc.r.a.ps from the gutter, he would pensively study them and draw philosophical reflections therefrom. The chiffonniers, too, sketched by Gavarni are not mindless tramps but profound reasoners.

Let us glance at the character of the Paris rag-picker as represented by a French writer of keen observation. "This chiffonnier," he says "carries in him the stuff of a Diogenes. Like the latter he is content in his nomadic life, in his endless peregrinations, in his ragged independence. He regards with infinite contempt the slaves who are shut up from morning till night in a workshop, or behind a counter. Let others, mere living machines, measure out their time by the hands of the clock, he, the philosophical rag-picker, works when he likes, rests when he likes, without recollections of yesterday or thoughts of the morrow. If the north wind is icy, he warms himself with a few gla.s.ses of camphor, or a cup of _pet.i.t noir_; if the heat inconveniences him, he throws off part of his rags, lies down beneath the shadow of his basket, and goes to sleep. If he is hungry, he hastens to earn a sou or two, and then feasts like a Lucullus on bread and Italian cheese. If he is ill, that matters nothing to him. 'The hospital,' he says, 'was not built for dogs.' Diogenes threw away his basin; the chiffonnier has no less a disdain for the goods of this world. It was a drunken chiffonnier, uncoifed by his own lurchings, who addressed to his battered felt hat, lying on the ground, this apostrophe full of logic: 'If I pick you up, I fall; if I fall, you will not help me up again. I shall leave you!'

Subjected to all kinds of privations, the chiffonnier is proud because he feels himself free. He treats with haughtiness even the rag merchant to whom he brings the sheaves which he has gathered, and from whom he occasionally receives slight advances. 'If you don't want to buy of me, well and good; I shall go elsewhere,' he says, making a gesture as if to depart. Through the mult.i.tudinous holes in his coat his pride is visible. He will say to the great of the earth: 'Get out of my daylight.'"

The _Chiffonnier de Paris_, Felix Pyat's drama, first produced at the Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre in 1847, is admirable not only for its story and its dramatic power, but also for the fidelity with which it reproduces the life of the rag-picker. Let us glance at this piece, in which Frederick Lemaitre, as the chiffonnier, achieved so great a triumph. In the prologue are represented two chiffonniers, who happen to meet on the Quai Austerlitz, lantern in hand, for it is evening.

These men have begun life very differently. One has a.s.sumed the crook and basket after having recklessly squandered his patrimony. He has known the most sybaritic luxury, and now, in the position to which he has sunk, feels a disgust for life and wishes to have done with it. The other has never known anything but rags and tatters. Just as the former is going to leap into the dark waves of the Seine, which splash at his feet, his comrade, though drunk and scarcely able to stand, suspends his hiccoughs and rushing towards him prevents the accomplishment of the fatal purpose. Then he reasons with the would-be suicide, and his baccha.n.a.lian eloquence prevails with the wretch, who, in a paroxysm of despair, cries: "No, I will not kill myself--but I will kill!" At that moment a bank cashier, laden with money, pa.s.ses by. The excited chiffonnier springs forward, seizes him by the throat, a.s.sa.s.sinates him, robs him, and flies. Father John, as the drunkard is called, has tried to prevent the tragedy, but the murderer, with a blow from his fist, has sent him rolling in the mud. When he gets up, sobered by the horrors of the moment, he hears the sound of an approaching patrol, and escapes in order to avoid unjust suspicion. And now the curtain rises. Twenty years meanwhile have elapsed. Father John, a virtuous and pensive rag-picker, has not moistened his lips with wine since that fatal night, of which the memory pursues him like a nightmare. In expiation for the drunken fit which prevented his staying the murderer's hand, he has set himself the task of watching over the daughter of the victim, Marie Didier, left alone and penniless in the world. Marie occupies a little room, bare of furniture, and near the sky, and here she struggles for a livelihood with her needle. She has nothing to divert her weary life but the visits of her neighbour, Father John, who occupies the adjoining room, both apartments being exhibited on the stage. The first scene shows us on one side Marie toiling at a ball-dress which she has to finish for one of her customers, and on the other the chiffonnier starting out upon his nocturnal explorations. It is the last night of the Carnival, and the streets resound with songs and laughter. Marie, as she st.i.tches on and on, dreams of the pleasures which beneath the gauze-like garment she is preparing the rich wearer will experience, and then, in a moment of childish playfulness, tries whether the narrow corset will fit her own slender and graceful waist. As she is looking at herself sideways in the gla.s.s a number of young girls come trooping gaily upstairs into the room, disguised in different fancy costumes. They are Marie's companions and fellow-workers, who, at the risk of having no bread to eat during Lent, are revelling in the Carnival. Laughing, singing, dancing, they would drag Marie to the ball. She has no costume? they say. Then let her wear her customer's. She is surrounded, and despite a partial resistance is dressed in the twinkling of an eye. Timid in her beautiful attire, she allows herself to be carried off by the friendly revellers, and just afterwards Father John comes back from his midnight prowl, and proceeds to examine the contents of his basket. His reflections as he turns over the different and mult.i.tudinous objects, now a letter beginning: "Dearest Angel,--My blood, my life, my blood, my soul, I will sacrifice all for you"--now a printed police ordinance, "Rag-pickers are forbidden to tear placards from these walls"--now the fragment of a pie--form one of the most admirable pa.s.sages in the play. Towards the end of the examination, as he is raking about with his crook, he comes across a little bundle of thousand-franc notes, ten in number. "What poor devil has lost these?" he exclaims. The idea of appropriating the treasure never once occurs to him. "If there is an honest reward to be had," he says, "I shall buy a new basket." Henceforth he will not close his eyes until he has discovered the possessor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A RAG-PICKER.]