THE BOULEVARD ST. MICHEL
From the Place St. Michel, this ever gay and crowded boulevard ascends a
long incline, up which the tired horses tug at the traces of the
fiacres, and the big double-decked steam trams crawl, until they reach
the Luxembourg Gardens,--and so on a level road as far as the Place de
l'Observatoire. Within this length lies the life of the "Boul' Miche."
Nearly every highway has its popular side, and on the "Boul' Miche" it
is the left one, coming up from the Seine. Here are the cafes, and from
5 P.M. until long past midnight, the life of the Quartier pours by
them--students, soldiers, families, poets, artists, sculptors, wives,
and sweethearts; bicycle girls, the modern grisette, the shop girl, and
the model; fakirs, beggars, and vagrants. Yet the word vagrant is a
misnomer in this city, where economy has reached a finesse that is
marvelous. That fellow, in filth and rags, shuffling along, his eyes
scrutinizing, like a hungry rat, every nook and corner under the cafe
tables on the terrace, carries a stick spiked with a pin. The next
instant, he has raked the butt of your discarded cigarette from beneath
your feet with the dexterity of a croupier. The butt he adds to the
collection in his filthy pocket, and shuffles on to the next cafe. It
will go so far at least toward paying for his absinthe. He is hungry,
but it is the absinthe for which he is working. He is a "marchand de
megots"; it is his profession.
[Illustration: TERRACE TAVERNE DU PANTHEON]
One finds every type of restaurant, tavern, and cafe along the "Boul'
Miche." There are small restaurants whose plat du jour might be traced
to some faithful steed finding a final oblivion in a brown sauce and
onions--an important item in a course dinner, to be had with wine
included for one franc fifty. There are brasseries too, gloomy by day
and brilliant by night (dispensing good Munich beer in two shades, and
German and French food), whose rich interiors in carved black oak,
imitation gobelin, and stained glass are never half illumined until the
lights are lit.
[Illustration: A "TYPE"]
All day, when the sun blazes, and the awnings are down, sheltering those
chatting on the terrace, the interiors of these brasseries appear dark
and cavernous.
The clientele is somber too, and in keeping with the place; silent
poets, long haired, pale, and always writing; serious-minded lawyers,
lunching alone, and fat merchants who eat and drink methodically.
Then there are bizarre cafes, like the d'Harcourt, crowded at night with
noisy women tawdry in ostrich plumes, cheap feather boas, and much
rouge. The d'Harcourt at midnight is ablaze with light, but the crowd is
common and you move on up the boulevard under the trees, past the shops
full of Quartier fashions--velvet coats, with standing collars buttoning
close under the chin; flamboyant black silk scarfs tied in a huge bow;
queer broad-brimmed, black hats without which no "types" wardrobe is
complete.
On the corner facing the square, and opposite the Luxembourg gate, is
the Taverne du Pantheon. This is the most brilliant cafe and restaurant
of the Quarter, forming a V with its long terrace, at the corner of the
boulevard and the rue Soufflot, at the head of which towers the superb
dome of the Pantheon.
[Illustration: (view of Pantheon from Luxembourg gate)]
It is 6 P.M. and the terrace, four rows deep with little round tables,
is rapidly filling. The white-aproned garcons are hurrying about or
squeezing past your table, as they take the various orders.
"Un demi! un!" shouts the garcon.
"Deux pernod nature, deux!" cries another, and presently the "Omnibus"
in his black apron hurries to your table, holding between his knuckles,
by their necks, half a dozen bottles of different aperitifs, for it is
he who fills your glass.
[Illustration: ALONG THE "BOUL' MICHE"]
It is the custom to do most of one's correspondence in these cafes. The
garcon brings you a portfolio containing note-paper, a bottle of violet
ink, an impossible pen that spatters, and a sheet of pink blotting-paper
that does not absorb. With these and your aperitif, the place is yours
as long as you choose to remain. No one will ask you to "move on" or pay
the slightest attention to you.
Should you happen to be a cannibal chief from the South Seas, and dine
in a green silk high hat and a necklace of your latest captive's teeth,
you would occasion a passing glance perhaps, but you would not be a
sensation.
[Illustration: (hotel sign)]
Celeste would say to Henriette:
"Regarde ca, Henriette! est-il drole, ce sauvage?"
And Henriette would reply quite assuringly:
"Eh bien quoi! c'est pas si extraordinaire, il est peut-etre de
Madagascar; il y en a beaucoup a Paris maintenant."
There is no phase of character, or eccentricity of dress, that Paris has
not seen.
Nor will your waiter polish off the marble top of your table, with the
hope that your ordinary sensibility will suggest another drink. It would
be beneath his professional dignity as a good garcon de cafe. The two
sous you have given him as a pourboire, he is well satisfied with, and
expresses his contentment in a "merci, monsieur, merci," the final
syllable ending in a little hiss, prolonged in proportion to his
satisfaction. After this just formality, you will find him ready to see
the point of a joke or discuss the current topics of the day. He is
intelligent, independent, very polite, but never servile.
[Illustration: (woman walking near fountain)]
It is difficult now to find a vacant chair on the long terrace. A group
of students are having a "Pernod," after a long day's work at the
atelier. They finish their absinthe and then, arm in arm, start off to
Madame Poivret's for dinner. It is cheap there; besides, the little
"boite," with its dingy room and sawdust floor, is a favorite haunt of
theirs, and the good old lady, with her credit slate, a friendly refuge
in time of need.
At your left sits a girl in bicycle bloomers, yellow-tanned shoes, and
short black socks pulled up snug to her sunburned calves. She has just
ridden in from the Bois de Boulogne, and has scorched half the way back
to meet her "officier" in pale blue. The two are deep in conversation.
Farther on are four older men, accompanied by a pale, sweet-faced woman
of thirty, her blue-black hair brought in a bandeau over her dainty
ears. She is the model of the gray-haired man on the left, a man of
perhaps fifty, with kindly intelligent eyes and strong, nervous,
expressive hands--hands that know how to model a colossal Greek
war-horse, plunging in battle, or create a nymph scarcely a foot high
out of a lump of clay, so charmingly that the French Government has not
only bought the nymph, but given him a little red ribbon for his pains.
[Illustration: (omnibus)]
He is telling the others of a spot he knows in Normandy, where one can
paint--full of quaint farm-houses, with thatched roofs; picturesque
roadsides, rich in foliage; bright waving fields, and cool green
woods, and purling streams; quaint gardens, choked with lavender and
roses and hollyhocks--and all this fair land running to the white sand
of the beach, with the blue sea beyond. He will write to old Pere
Jaqueline that they are all coming--it is just the place in which to
pose a model "en plein air,"--and Suzanne, his model, being a Normande
herself, grows enthusiastic at the thought of going down again to the
sea. Long before she became a Parisienne, and when her beautiful hair
was a tangled shock of curls, she used to go out in the big boats,
with the fisherwomen--barefooted, brown, and happy. She tells them of
those good days, and then they all go into the Taverne to dine, filled
with the idea of the new trip, and dreaming of dinners under the
trees, of "Tripes a la mode de Caen," Normandy cider, and a lot of new
sketches besides.
[Illustration: (shop front)]
Already the tables within are well filled. The long room, with its newer
annex, is as brilliant as a jewel box--the walls rich in tiled panels
suggesting the life of the Quarter, the woodwork in gold and light oak,
the big panels of the rich gold ceiling exquisitely painted.
At one of the tables two very chic young women are dining with a young
Frenchman, his hair and dress in close imitation of the Duc d'Orleans.
These poses in dress are not uncommon.
A strikingly pretty woman, in a scarlet-spangled gown as red as her
lips, is dining with a well-built, soldierly-looking man in black; they
sit side by side as is the custom here.
The woman reminds one of a red lizard--a salamander--her "svelte" body
seemingly boneless in its gown of clinging scales. Her hair is
purple-black and freshly onduled; her skin as white as ivory. She has
the habit of throwing back her small, well-posed head, while under their
delicately penciled lids her gray eyes take in the room at a glance.
She is not of the Quarter, but the Taverne du Pantheon is a refuge for
her at times, when she grows tired of Paillard's and Maxim's and her
quarreling retinue.
"Let them howl on the other bank of the Seine," says this empress of
the half-world to herself, "I dine with Raoul where I please."
And now one glittering, red arm with its small, heavily-jeweled hand
glides toward Raoul's open cigarette case, and in withdrawing a
cigarette she presses for a moment his big, strong hand as he holds near
her polished nails the flaming match.
[Illustration: ALONG THE SEINE]
Her companion watches her as she smokes and talks--now and then he leans
closer to her, squaring his broad shoulders and bending lower his
strong, determined face, as he listens to her,--half-amused, replying to
her questions leisurely, in short, crisp sentences. Suddenly she stamps
one little foot savagely under the table, and, clenching her jeweled
hands, breathes heavily. She is trembling with rage; the man at her side
hunches his great shoulders, flicks the ashes from his cigarette, looks
at her keenly for a moment, and then smiles. In a moment she is herself
again, almost penitent; this little savage, half Roumanian, half
Russian, has never known what it was to be ruled! She has seen men grow
white when she has stamped her little foot, but this big Raoul, whom she
loves--who once held a garrison with a handful of men--he does not
tremble! she loves him for his devil-me-care indifference--and he enjoys
her temper.
But the salamander remembers there are some whom she dominated, until
they groveled like slaves at her feet; even the great Russian nobleman
turned pale when she dictated to him archly and with the voice of an
angel the price of his freedom.
"Poor fool! he shot himself the next day," mused the salamander.
Yes, and even the adamant old banker in Paris, crabbed, stern,
unrelenting to his debtors--shivered in his boots and ended in signing
away half his fortune to her, and moved his family into a permanent
chateau in the country, where he keeps himself busy with his shooting
and his books.
* * * * *
As it grows late, the taverne becomes more and more animated.
Every one is talking and having a good time. The room is bewildering in
gay color, the hum of conversation is everywhere, and as there is a
corresponding row of tables across the low, narrow room, friendly
greetings and often conversations are kept up from one side to the
other. The dinner, as it progresses, assumes the air of a big family
party of good bohemians. The French do not bring their misery with them
to the table. To dine is to enjoy oneself to the utmost; in fact the
French people cover their disappointment, sadness, annoyances, great or
petty troubles, under a masque of "blague," and have such an innate
dislike of sympathy or ridicule that they avoid it by turning
everything into "blague."
This veneer is misleading, for at heart the French are sad. Not to speak
of their inmost feelings does not, on the other hand, prevent them at
times from being most confidential. Often, the merest exchange of
courtesies between those sharing the same compartment in a train, or a
seat on a "bus," seems to be a sufficient introduction for your neighbor
to tell you where he comes from, where he is going, whether he is
married or single, whom his daughter married, and what regiment his son
is in. These little confidences often end in his offering you half his
bottle of wine and extending to you his cigarettes.
[Illustration: LES BEAUX MAQUEREAUX]
If you have finished dinner, you go out on the terrace for your coffee.
The fakirs are passing up and down in front, selling their wares--little
rabbits, wonderfully lifelike, that can jump along your table and sit on
their hind legs, and wag their ears; toy snakes; small leaden pigs for
good luck; and novelties of every description. Here one sees women with
baskets of ecrivisse boiled scarlet; an acrobat tumbles on the
pavement, and two men and a girl, as a marine, a soldier, and a
vivandiere, in silvered faces and suits, pose in melodramatic attitudes.
The vivandiere is rescued alternately from a speedy death by the marine
and the soldier.
Presently a little old woman approaches, shriveled and smiling, in her
faded furbelows now in rags. She sings in a piping voice and executes
between the verses a tottering pas seul, her eyes ever smiling, as if
she still saw over the glare of the footlights, in the haze beyond, the
vast audience of by-gone days; smiling as if she still heard the big
orchestra and saw the leader with his vibrant baton, watching her every
movement. She is over seventy now, and was once a premier danseuse at
the opera.
But you have not seen all of the Taverne du Pantheon yet. There is an
"American Bar" downstairs; at least, so the sign reads at the top of a
narrow stairway leading to a small, tavern-like room, with a sawdust
floor, heavy deal tables, and wooden stools. In front of the bar are
high stools that one climbs up on and has a lukewarm whisky soda, next
to Yvonne and Marcelle, who are both singing the latest catch of the day
at the top of their lungs, until they are howled at to keep still or are
lifted bodily off their high stools by the big fellow in the "type" hat,
who has just come in.
[Illustration: MOTHER AND DAUGHTER]
Before a long table at one end of the room is the crowd of American
students singing in a chorus. The table is full now, for many have come
from dinners at other cafes to join them. At one end, and acting as
interlocutor for this impromptu minstrel show, presides one of the
best fellows in the world. He rises solemnly, his genial round face
wreathed in a subtle smile, and announces that he will sing, by earnest
request, that popular ballad, "'Twas Summer and the Little Birds were
Singing in the Trees."
There are some especially fine "barber chords" in this popular ditty,
and the words are so touching that it is repeated over and over again.
Then it is sung softly like the farmhand quartettes do in the rural
melodrama outside the old homestead in harvest time. Oh! I tell you it's
a truly rural octette. Listen to that exhibition bass voice of Jimmy
Sands and that wandering tenor of Tommy Whiteing, and as the last chord
dies away (over the fields presumably) a shout goes up:
"How's that?"
"Out of sight," comes the general verdict from the crowd, and bang go a
dozen beer glasses in unison on the heavy table.
"Oh, que c'est beau!" cries Mimi, leading the successful chorus in a new
vocal number with Edmond's walking-stick; but this time it is a French
song and the whole room is singing it, including our old friend,
Monsieur Frank, the barkeeper, who is mixing one of his famous
concoctions which are never twice quite alike, but are better than if
they were.
The harmonic beauties of "'Twas Summer and the Little Birds were Singing
in the Trees" are still inexhausted, but it sadly needs a piano
accompaniment--with this it would be perfect; and so the whole crowd,
including Yvonne, and Celeste, and Marcelle, and the two Frenchmen, and
the girl in the bicycle clothes, start for Jack Thompson's studio in the
rue des Fourneaux, where there is a piano that, even if the candles in
the little Louis XVI brackets do burn low and spill down the keys, and
the punch rusts the strings, it will still retain that beautiful, rich
tone that every French upright, at seven francs a month, possesses.
[Illustration: (Bullier)]