as we do. “Good, it is understood, my friend,” the Parisian will say as
he bids you good-bye; “I shall look for you then for the _apéritif_ at
Pousset’s.” You must not remind him of his tardiness if he does not
arrive until half past six, or be surprised if you see him patiently
waiting for you at three. They do things that way in France.
[Illustration:
Drawing by F. Berkeley Smith
IN THE BAR DU HELDER]
From Christmas to New Year’s the boulevards become still more
picturesque. Hundreds of booths are erected along the entire route. At
night gasoline lamps flare from the stands of fakirs and venders of
toys and cheap novelties who cry their wares. For ten sous you can buy
“The Last Sigh of Madame Humbert.”
There are endless mechanical toys for children, and the latest
inventions for the household, the inevitable lamp-burner so economical
that it actually puts a dividend in your bank if used long enough.
There are to be had for a few sous marvelous potato-peelers which turn
with one twist of the wrist the most modest _cuisinière_ into a _cordon
bleu_. And lightning eradicators for bachelors’ grease-spots, altho
many of the benedicts who came to buy needed a stronger mixture than
was contained in the neat package with instructions, to render
themselves immaculate.
“_Allons! allons! mesdames et messieurs_,” shouts a man in a wig and a
silk hat. “With my wonderful invention the misery of old age vanishes.
It is a veritable fountain of youth! With it the old become young and
youth stays off advancing years! I not only sell it but I give you free
the receipt, and all for the price of ten sous.” And the fakir runs his
fingers through his wig and throws back the lapels of his shining
frock-coat stained green by years of inclement weather.
[Illustration: A VETERAN MARCHANDE DE JOURNAUX]
And there is still another, the gentleman fakir, robust and faultlessly
dressed, who is an expert in drawing a crowd, accenting words of
promises that stay the feet of those hurrying in front of his flaring
lamps. He shows the glittering contents of the box he offers complete
for a franc. Pandora would have thrown her own away in the ash heap had
she seen half its tempting contents. “_Mesdames et messieurs_, I would
have to lie if I told you that ever before was such an offer made to
the public, and, as you may be justly inquisitive as to how it is
possible to give all this for the small sum of one franc, let me tell
you that it is for an advertisement only that I make this stupendous
offer—for the night only, and nowhere else and at no other time will
you get such an opportunity. Now, _mesdames et messieurs_, follow me
closely; for one franc I give this watch, a superb present by itself;
with the watch, this chain and cross, bound to please any young lady;
with the chain and cross, this silver bracelet that will fit any arm;
with the bracelet, this exquisite pocket-book, also in silver, lined
with silk; with the purse, a handsome set of studs for a gentleman. Who
would not be proud to own such as these?” And he placed his fat hand
over his heart. “And, finally, with all this,” he bellowed on, “a
miniature brooch. Now, _mesdames et messieurs_, see for yourselves.
Step up, step up!” And the fakir pushed back his silk hat on the back
of his head, wiped his perspiring forehead, dived in a little red trunk
studded with brass nails, and took out a dozen boxes to satisfy the
outstretched hands. He had the crowd going and he knew it.
At a distance of ten feet, under the glare of the light and handled
cleverly, the display of gorgeous trinkets might have come from the Rue
de la Paix. His audience became enthusiastic. The hypnotist in the
shining tile rattled on, and, while his hands were making change and
producing from the two small brass coffers the packages of treasures,
his eyes searched for those about to weaken. The francs poured in, and
I recalled the words of Mr. Barnum: “The public the world over likes to
be fooled.”
On fête days and holidays the Boulevard Sébastopol is swarming with an
ever-moving mass of humanity. It is one continuous bargain counter from
the Place du Châtelet to the Grand Boulevard. Here the bazaars and
dry-goods and provision stores do most of their trade on the sidewalk.
The fronts of some are festooned with whole cartloads of pheasants,
rabbits and hares, and with dozens of deer and wild boar strung up at a
bargain. There are other façades ornamented with cheap clothes of the
“nobby suits for gents’ order,” and hardware bazaars and cut-rate sales
on roasted coffee, boots, shoes and cheap silk petticoats.
The cafés along the boulevard are for the most part dingy and
unpretentious, but they suffice as resting-places to many from the
passing stream of humanity. Women without hats, with their market
baskets; the pretty daughters of _concierges_ out for a day’s
bargaining; hundreds of the wretchedly poor; families of country
_bourgeois_; the tough with his middle swathed in a red scarf and his
black hair reversed in greasy wisps slicked over his ears, his mate a
girl in a red jacket, with a bit of ribbon serving as a collar, her
black hair twisted on the top of her head and shining in pomade. This
pair hurry along together, he with the easy gait of a thief, she with
her red hands in her pockets, her feet in low-heeled slippers buttoned
with a strap, treads on by his side, her eyes scanning the pavement. He
has promised to give her a new pair of slippers with high red heels.
To-night she will be a queen at the ball of the “Boule Rouge,” coveted
by other thieves. Farther along a crowd is struggling to take advantage
of a cut-price in chickens, and a fat _commerçant_ with a red face
squeezes his way out holding a pair of bargain broilers. It is a
boulevard of the people, a rendezvous for the thrifty and the
hard-working, the thoroughfare of the outcast and the unfortunate. It
is sordid, but it is intensely human. It is this distinct character of
Parisian thoroughfares, each one differing from its neighbor, which
makes the highways and byways of the city so interesting to those who
delight in walking abroad with their eyes open.
There is not a street one turns down but which is unique in itself. In
the shops along the “Rue de la Paix” the art of satisfying the demands
of vanity and the whims of the luxurious has been brought to
perfection. The Rue de la Paix is looking its prettiest at noon, the
hour when all the little _ouvrières_ and _modèles_ from the smart
dressmaking and millinery establishments pour out for their luncheon,
happy as school-girls during recess.
If it happens to be a sunny noon with the blue sky as a setting to the
gilded balconies brilliant in roses, geraniums and trailing ivy, you
will see the street below alive with these merry little women, each one
vying with the other in the neatness of her coiffure and the _chic_ of
her simple black frock and _fourreau_. They promenade chatting, joking
and gossiping, without their hats, for no little _ouvrière_ ever thinks
of wearing one until her day’s work is over.
With the exception of the working classes, the average Parisienne is
not beautiful. It is her chicness, her vivacity, and her innate
knowledge of the artificial which makes her attractive, for not all the
actresses in Paris are in the theaters.
In stormy weather you may go to the arcades. These covered _passages_,
which have existed through so many Parisian epochs, are honeycombed
with shops full of novelties. Such are the Passage de l’Opéra, the
Passage des Panoramas and the Passage Choiseul. How many hearts of
French children have palpitated as they were dragged through the
Passage Jouffroy, containing the very workshop of Santa Claus himself!
It is a paradise of things that squeak and wind up; rattling railroad
trains which swing around tin curves and under painted tunnels with a
rapidity sufficient to suffocate the helpless toy passengers within;
toys for poor little good children and rich little spoiled ones, dolls
whose deportment is faultless and whose vocabulary is limited to “papa”
and “maman” and those who can not say a word, but whose clothes, from
the tiny hat to their walking-boots, with an accompanying trousseau
containing a summer and winter automobile coat, goggles and all, might
have been fashioned by a Worth. Not even in the public squares are the
soldiers of France more immortalized than in the Passage Jouffroy.
There are whole forts full of Germans ready to be blown to smithereens
by the gallant advancing force of _Les Français_, and formidable
cannons mounted on sanded ramparts with pill boxes containing enough
ammunition for the most glorious of victories, to say nothing of the
gorgeous _pièce de résistance_, the satin pantalooned _balanceur_ with
violet eyes that close like an owl’s, who accomplishes the most
difficult gymnastics by little fits and starts to the accompaniment in
liquid tones of a music-box tearing through the overture of William
Tell in waltz time.
There are also tens of thousands of people who come to gaze at the
shops and the passing throng, to whom it is a treat to pass an evening
among the throng and lights, and to whom from childhood the mere fact
of a promenade has been accepted as a pleasure. You can see them with
their wives and children, for Paris counts an endless number of these
_petits ménages_ where money is scant, work ill paid, and where the
habit of the most rigid economy is practised from one year’s end to the
other. There is next to no allowance in the budget for pleasure, and
the glamour of the street, the ever changing interest of the shop
windows, and the warmth and comfort of the cafés, are the only
recreations within their means.
Christmas eve is celebrated in every café and _brasserie_ by a
“_réveillon_,” and for days tables are taken in advance for this gay
celebration. Supper is served at midnight and the champagne flows on
until broad daylight, and by 2:00 A.M. the cafés are in an uproar of
jollity. Their interiors present a brilliant sight, and the informality
and good nature of a _bal masqué_ reign supreme until the light of dawn
creeps through the windows. So great is the crowd at many of the
_réveillons_ that the entrance doors are forced to be closed at
midnight. At the Taverne Royale, at Pousset’s, at the Café de Paris and
dozens of other places equally celebrated, there is no gayer sight to
be seen throughout a Parisian year.
On New Year’s Eve all Paris is merry.
New Year’s is of more importance to the French than Christmas and is
made much of. It is the custom to send bonbons and flowers to one’s
friends, and to acquaintances cards _ad libitum_.
In the booths the “ready-while-you-wait” printers do a thriving trade,
and the stores for bonbons are open until long past midnight. The
stroke of twelve announcing the new year is a signal for all of Paris
to embrace. In the cafés along the thronged boulevards and in the
public balls you will see the general custom carried out with
considerable zest.
[Illustration]
High up in Montmartre at the ball of the Moulin de la Galette on the
last night of the year, at the approach of midnight the roll of a drum
announced the hour, and Father Time with his scythe appeared in the
orchestra gallery and melodramatically waved good-by to the old year.
Twelve! pealed out the bells, and a great cheer rose from the dancers.
Father Time became a youth bearing a placard 1903, and a thousand
dancing couples stopped to embrace and wish each other “_une bonne
année_.” Simultaneously the orchestra crashed into a lively _galop_,
glasses were drained, fresh corks popped from fizzing bottles amid
cheers and screams. Everyone was happy, and perhaps a few turned over a
new leaf.
Chapter Five
MONTMARTRE
“Mesdames et Messieurs,” announced the genial major-domo of the
cabaret. “I have the honor to present to you our sympathetic comrade
Mademoiselle Marcelle Tournon in her répertoire.” He bowed low to a
pretty dark-haired woman advancing through the crowded aisle, and,
extending his hand, led her ceremoniously to the platform in front of
the piano.
“Come, friends,” cried the director, his ruddy face beaming with
enthusiasm, “a _double-ban_ of applause for our distinguish artiste.”
Simultaneously there rose a cheer from the roomful of bohemians
followed by a double round of handclapping in appreciative greeting.
Then, settling themselves beneath the rifts of pipe and cigarette
smoke, they remained quiet to listen to the singer. Marcelle smiled
graciously in recognition. The owl-like accompanist ran a light
_arpeggio_ over the keys, and the singer, raising her music, poured
forth her mellow voice in “Pierrot.” “Poor Pierrot, you could not give
a necklace to Columbine,” sang Marcelle, “and so she left you.
Columbine, grown vain and selfish, leaves you to shiver and think in
your garret. The strings of your lute are broken, the tunes will not
come any more, and your poor heart is aching from a cruel little crack
clear across it that never, never, can be mended.
“Columbine fluttered like a butterfly out to the glitter of the world.
Thorns scratched her in the garden as she hurried on, and beyond the
wall of their paradise she found the world, but it was not at all like
the world of her dreams. The rain faded her pretty dress, and hunger
shriveled her delicate body; meanwhile the multitude rushed by her
unheeding.
“Poor Pierrot! How she craved the sound of his voice now, his trustful
eyes, the cool touch of his white cheeks! How merry were the tunes he
strummed for her!
“She crawled back as best she could to what was once their paradise;
she found herself at last at the gate, and, swallowing her pride,
pulled the latch and entered the garden.
“The place was silent. The flowers drooped their heads; not even her
old friends the roses nodded to her as she flew on up the path to the
house. Here she paused to listen again. A bat squeaked in the eaves
over her head, and in terror she pushed open the door and climbed the
rickety stairs.
“‘Pierrot! Pierrot!’ she cried, and in the garret she found her Pierrot
huddled upon a bed of straw, his poor white face turned towards the
wall. Columbine called to him, feebly first, then in a frenzy, but he
did not speak. A string of the lute snapped in the silence and
Columbine sank down in a little heap, and cried, and cried, and cried.
And they say that days afterwards the birds found them and covered them
with leaves.”
The song was ended and Marcelle, amid a thunderous applause, joined a
group of singers awaiting their turn.
As nightly my pipe added to the hazy atmosphere of the cabaret, I came
to know Marcelle better. She was a woman of thirty, beautiful when she
sang, fascinating when she smiled, but in repose her clean-cut features
were saddened with the hardships of a bohemian life which had been not
only a wearing struggle for recognition, but even one for existence.
She often spoke of her present country home, of her garden, and how
busy she was with it all in the hours in which she was free from the
cafés-concerts and the cabarets. I thought I could discover upon a
closer glance a tinge of sunburn in her complexion, and her hands
looked like those of a woman who spent much of her life digging in her
garden.
“You must come and see my garden,” she said one night, “it is on the
summit of Montmartre, on the very top of the Butte. Ah! you should see
the view from there! All Paris lies below. It is not like a city up
there at all as you shall see; it is quite like a little country
village. Come! I will show you how to find it,” and, taking a scrap of
paper from her music roll, she drew me a plan, a zig-zag route up the
Butte which, she assured me if I carefully followed it, would lead me
in due time to her tiny villa.
[Illustration: GEORGES WAGUE, A CELEBRATED PIERROT]
“I call it the Villa Polichinelle,” she said. “That is a good name, is
it not! It is only a little joke of a house any way. It is the last one
as you turn down the lane and go through the orchard. The others are
all occupied, so you see I have neighbors. Madame Franelli, a danseuse
at the Opéra and her two daughters, live in the first house. Thérèse,
the youngest, took a prize at the Conservatoire. She is very beautiful;
you may remember her at the Châtelet, a slight blonde, exquisitely
made. It is in her blood to dance well; her mother was once a great
dancer but is almost an invalid now and rarely goes on.
“In the second lives a poet of Montmartre; the third is occupied by a
famous old clown; a painter has the fourth; and Duflos, the comedian,
the fifth. You see we are quite a colony of _artists_ together. We call
it ‘our village,’ and have elected Duflos as Mayor and Monsieur Dallet,
the clown, as chief of police. Dear old Monsieur Dallet, he would not
hurt a fly, his heart is so big!
“Come Sunday morning. I will show you my tulips and we can breakfast in
the garden.”
And Marcelle rolled up her music and hurried away to sing at another
cabaret.
I folded the all important plan with its scraggly route carefully in my
portfolio.
Sunday dawned clear and sparkling in sunshine, so to the garden I
started. Leaving my cab at the place Blanche, I began my ascent of the
Butte by way of the steep rue Lepic, pausing for breath under the
ancient windmill of the Moulin de la Galette.
Up! up! up! out of Paris, for the city now lay shimmering in a haze of
sunshine below. The spires of Notre-Dame and the massive roof of the
Opéra jutted from a sea of streets and buildings. And so I kept on up
the Butte, past a cobbler who kept a cow. I was crawling now like a fly
over the bald cranium beneath which, as all good _Montmartrois_ will
tell you, lie the brains of Paris.
I turned up quaint streets, many of them lined with two-story houses of
ancient pattern, which leaned for support upon their sturdier
neighbors, who in turn rely upon great beams shored against their
crumbling backs. I sat down by the roadside to re-study my plan. “To
the left,” it said, and I kept on. A flock of geese waddled indignantly
ahead of me and, crossing the road, disappeared under a fence. Nearby
some chickens scratched and pecked away in front of a doorway whose
threshold was worn and polished by the passing feet of a hundred years.
I peeped through high fences behind which lay orchards and wild gardens
grown picturesque from neglect, and farther on I passed an ancient
burial-ground.
Here the narrow streets were unpaved and at night gloomily lighted by
an occasional oil lantern, friendly safeguards to the wayfarer obliged
to turn these corners after dark.
I confess I was grateful for the sunlight, as I imagined how this
strange quarter would look at night, and recalled to mind that the
notorious Cabaret of the Assassins lay upon an isolated ledge of the
Butte but a stone’s throw away.
Finally, at the end of a lane I came to a gate, and, entering, found my
way through a tangled orchard leading to a small settlement of frame
houses fronting on a winding path. I looked about for the inevitable
_concierge_, to whom to disclose my identity and ask permission to
enter this bohemian community, when, with a growl, an ugly-looking dog
rushed to the end of his chain and, with his scrubby neck bristling,
stood eyeing me viciously. Over his kennel was printed in blue letters
“_Concierge_,” evidently the work of Marcelle’s neighbor, the “clown,”
I thought. Measuring the length of the brute’s chain and the circle it
would describe, if swung in my direction, I shied by him and kept on my
way. At the narrowest part of the path I found another sign: “Room for
three automobiles only.” Over the door of the smallest house I read:
“Château of the Duke and Duchess of Montmartre.” I passed the poet’s
house, a little box of a place, half smothered in a tangled garden. He
had decorated his modest façade with the verses of Villon and Verlaine;
a satyr in stone rose from a labyrinth of flowers, and nearby a marble
nymph, bathing in a miniature pool, peered laughingly from her
hiding-place at the immovable satyr. Art was far more cheaply to be had
there than three meals a day.
The pathway now ran through a short thicket. Beyond it lay the crest of
the lane, an expanse of blue sky, and, nestling in the prettiest of
tiny gardens, the “Villa Polichinelle.”
Marcelle, who had been watching me find my way, now called to me from
an upper window, and came down to greet me in a sunbonnet and a calico
wrapper.
“I am so glad you have come,” she said, cheerily. “And did the plan
work well?” she added, with a laugh.
“Perfectly,” I replied. “Only you did not put in the dog.”
“Ah! Cerbère—yes, I know. He growled at you because you were a
stranger. He is not a bad old fellow, tho, when you know him; you see
he seems to feel responsible for us.”
I could not help shivering at the thought that Marcelle came home long
after midnight, often alone, through rain, snow and slush, passing, to
get to this mountain retreat, through one of the worst quarters of
Paris, inhabited for the most part by gentlemen and their consorts
whose records are as black as the ace of spades.
“Now,” said my hostess, “you must see all of my modest kingdom. First
my garden, then my family, and then my house.”
“Good,” said I, “the garden shall come first.”
“Ah! I am glad you love flowers,” cried Marcelle, growing enthusiastic
as I complimented her upon the beauty of her roses. She threw aside her
sunbonnet and led me triumphantly to a bed of red and yellow tulips,
which was edged by a row of box skirting the neatly-raked gravel path,
so characteristic of French gardens.
“I planted them all myself,” said Marcelle, “except this last row,
which the poet helped me to do. You see they are jumbled—as I told
him, like some of his verses. He is a symbolist, you know. Nothing the
poet writes can one ever understand. But he says we all will do so some
day—that the cheap realism of the present will soon sink into oblivion
and be forgotten.”
There were beds of _giroflees_, masses of pinks, odd corners of velvety
pansies, and bower-like arbors covered with Jacqueminot roses. We
descended some stepping-stones to a smaller lower garden and entered a
thatched kiosk lined with turkey red, upon which were hung bas-reliefs
and pen-and-ink drawings, souvenirs from those who loved the
good-fellowship of this Arcadian nook.
And now Juliette, Marcelle’s bonne, her sleeves rolled over the elbows
of her plump arms, came to the kiosk with vermouth and cigarettes.
Following her, a green parrot pigeontoed his way down the gravel walk,
muttering to himself a jumble of phrases.
“Come, my good Jacquot!” called Marcelle to the parrot. “Jacquot is one
of my family; you shall see the others: my cat, my big Frou-Frou, and
her pretty kittens, and the pigeons, and all the rest of the ménagerie
after _déjeuner_.”
Jacquot climbed to the table and bent his beak to his breast. While
Marcelle rubbed the pinfeathers of his green neck, he clucked and sang
to himself in delight. Then he shook himself, dilated the pupils of his
yellow eyes as he took a careful look at me, and, having satisfied
himself as to my character, pigeontoed his way slowly to my shoulder.
He sang quite clearly a song that Marcelle had taught him:
“_J’ai du bon tabac dans ma tabatière,
J’ai du bon tabac, tu n’en auras pas._”
Half an hour later Juliette laid the table in the kiosk for breakfast,
with two extra places set for the clown and the poet, who both came
late, with endless apologies to Marcelle for their tardiness.
“There had been an extra rehearsal at the Nouveau Cirque,” explained
the merry old fun-maker, and he mopped his brow, perspiring from his
quick walk up the Butte. Marcelle straightway forgave him, and further
cheered him with an affectionate pat on the top of his shining bald
pate as he slid into his chair. As he unfolded his napkin there tumbled
into his lap a _boutonnière_ of mignonette, which our hostess had
thoughtfully hidden for her old comrade. He had been her counselor and
friend, often sharing with her the little he had during her days of
penury, for Marcelle’s life, as I have said, had been from babyhood a
struggle for existence. She was a flower that had fought its way to the
sunshine from between the stones of Paris.
[Illustration:
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith
CHRISTIANE MENDELYES AS ROSALIE]