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 class of
individuals of both sexes, 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 glass, 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 hoardings 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 glass
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 classifies, 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 classify 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 accumulated 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.
[Illustration: 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 participation 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 municipal 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 pass 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 massacred those luckless
persons whom ignorance and superstition 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 depôt 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 title 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. Frédéric de Courcy, Sauvage, and Bayard, have
reproduced on the stage his manners and customs. One chiffonnier named
Liard passed 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 scraps 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 glasses of
camphor, or a cup of _petit 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 multitudinous 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 Théâtre 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 Lemaître, 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 assumed 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
bacchanalian 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, passes by. The excited
chiffonnier springs forward, seizes him by the throat, assassinates 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 stitches 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 glass 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 multitudinous 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 passages 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.
[Illustration: A RAG-PICKER.]
To return to Marie. The stage is transformed into a sumptuously
decorated saloon. Around a table sparkling with wax tapers and crystals
the joyous companions of Henri Berville are performing the obsequies of
his bachelorhood, for he is shortly to be married. Henri alone resists
the general gaiety. He neither eats nor drinks, and the champagne
bubbling in the glass or discharging its corks against the ceiling is
powerless to relieve his melancholy. Suddenly the door opens and the
band of laughing grisettes who have carried off Marie from her dreary
room enter to the movement of a polka. Marie follows them, but feels
ashamed and bewildered; so much so that she crosses her hands over her
mask as though it did not sufficiently disguise her. Her companions,
however, are ready enough to lift their masks to anyone who will admire
their neat little noses or roguish eyes; and presently one of the guests
fastens himself on to the bashful Marie, and carries his insolence so
far as to unmask her. In trying to escape, moreover, from his violent
hands she tears a part of that precious robe which a year's toil would
scarcely pay for. Henri Berville interposes and indignantly reproaches
his friend with such behaviour. The friend replies with insolence, and
a duel becomes inevitable. Marie, meanwhile, half mad with shame and
fear, has fled. During her absence a mysterious woman has penetrated
into her chamber and deposited on the bed an infant. This woman had
been paid to kill the innocent child, but shrinking at the last moment
from so great a crime, has simply got rid of it as best she could. The
fee she had received was ten thousand francs, and this was the sum,
in bank-notes, which the rag-picker had discovered at the end of his
crook. In her eagerness to escape she had lost the precious paper.
Now Marie enters the room with her torn dress, still deeply vexed at
the affront she has received. But if she has been grossly insulted,
she has likewise found a noble defender; and for this young man, as
brave and generous as his companion was cowardly, she begins to feel
the flame of an impossible love, which simply mocks her, whilst a
thousand regrets disturb her gentle breast. How can she replace this
torn dress? In despair she determines to put an end to her life. But,
on the point of doing so, she hears a plaintive cry in the room. She
goes to the bed and discovers the child. The sight of it changes her
resolution, and when Father John appears he finds his protégée nursing
the little one whom she proposes to adopt. In a later scene Marie
pays a visit to the mansion of Baron Hoffman in order to present her
bill to Mademoiselle, the baron's daughter. The little dressmaker is
very ill received, and tries to excuse her importunity by explaining
the circumstances in connection with the child she has to support--at
which the daughter seems strangely disquieted and the father enraged.
The truth is that Mlle. Hoffman herself has brought this child into
the world, and has confessed her shame to the baron, who thereupon
wished to get rid of the little creature for a very particular reason.
Baron Hoffman is the rag-picker who assassinated Marie's father twenty
years before. For the whole world he would not have had an obstacle
arise to the marriage of his daughter with Henri Berville; nor is his
anxiety on this point unintelligible. Henri Berville is the son of
the banker whose cashier the ex-rag-picker has killed, and with whom,
subsequently, he has entered into partnership. Dreading every moment of
his life that some traces of his crime may be discovered, he wishes, by
marrying his daughter to the banker's son, to identify the interests
of Henri Berville with his own. From what is said during her visit
to Mlle. Hoffman by the unsuspecting Marie, who does not dream that
she is addressing the mother of the foundling, the baron sees that his
grandchild is not dead. The woman who has already received one fee of
ten thousand francs is now presented with another of like amount, and
this time she executes her mission to the letter. The infant is found
murdered in Marie's room. Marie is arrested on suspicion and imprisoned,
and Father John swears to discover the true assassin. Fortune assists
him. He discovers the owner of the bank-notes in his possession, visits
her, perceives her guilt, and, working partly upon her cupidity, partly
upon her fear, obtains from her a compromising letter. Then, armed
with damnatory evidence, he calls upon Baron Hoffman, who, recognising
him, gets his lackeys to make him drunk. An abstinence of twenty years
has not destroyed his liking for wine, and he now in a weak moment
sacrifices so unreservedly to Bacchus, that the baron has no difficulty
in wresting from him as he lies inebriated the documentary evidence of
his guilt. Instead of accuser he has now become the accused, and Baron
Hoffman has him arrested for complicity with the murderer of the bank
cashier. Having ridded himself of this dangerous witness, the baron goes
to Saint-Lazare to see Marie, who is in detention there, and manages to
make her believe that she will be the cause of Henri Berville's ruin
by preventing his marriage with Mlle. Clara Hoffman. Between Marie and
Henri an undeclared passion already exists. Since their first meeting at
the masked ball, Henri has sworn that he will marry her and no one else;
for indeed he has never loved Clara, whose hand was forced upon him, and
who already has another less chivalrous lover, as events have only too
painfully proved.
Marie, deceived by the baron's representations, now resolves to
sacrifice herself to Henri's welfare, and signs a false confession
which has been prepared for her, and by which she lays claim to a crime
of which she is guiltless. Meanwhile Father John, brought before the
commissary, is concerned with nothing but the demonstration of Marie's
innocence. He speaks with such eloquence and grief, his accents are so
real and heartrending, that the hesitating magistrate consents to make
experiment of a proof which the chiffonnier proposes. "Lend me thirty
thousand francs!" he cries. At this demand everyone present thinks him
insane, with the exception of Henri, who promptly furnishes the loan.
With the aid of this sum the chiffonnier obtains from the murderess of
Clara's child conclusive evidence of Marie's innocence and the baron's
guilt. Hoffman is brought to justice, and no obstacle remains to the
union of Marie and Henri Berville. "But how can we reward devotion
like yours?" ask Henri and his friends of Father John; who, a true
chiffonnier to the last, replies, "Give me a new basket!"