THE MONT-DE-PIÉTÉ.
“Uncle” and “Aunt”--Organisation of the Mont-de-Piété--Its Various
Branches--Its Warehouses and Sale-rooms.
French idioms, and particularly slang ones, are seldom translatable into
English. The cant Parisian word, however, for a pawnbroker bears quite a
comic resemblance to the word employed in London. The medical student of
our metropolis, when he is at low water, takes his watch to his “uncle.”
The medical student of Paris resorts, under like circumstances, to his
“aunt.” Neither would think of employing the dignified historical word
used by the student of Brussels, who, as if mindful of the pawnbroker’s
origin, calls him “the Lombard.”
The English student speaks of the unfortunate watch in question as being
“up the spout”; the Parisian declares that his is “on the nail”--the
idea apparently being that the chronometer is “hung up” until more
prosperous days.
The great pawnbroking establishment, or Mont-de-Piété, of Paris, is
situated in the Rue des Blancs Manteaux, with a principal branch office
in the Rue Bonaparte; but it may be interesting meanwhile to glance at
those minor establishments which are scattered over the whole of the
French capital. Like their counterparts in London, they excite in the
philosophic beholder a melancholy curiosity, above all in the poorer
quarters, where dire necessity compels the levying of those loans which,
in more fashionable parts, are the result of an extravagant life.
The Paris pawnshop has the aspect of quite an ordinary house, and
nothing would particularly attract to it the attention of an
observer--not even the incessant stream of its visitors in and out--were
it not that these wear a suspiciously stealthy air as they enter or quit
the place; a sort of shame on their arrival and an uneasy haste at their
departure.
It is not, as a rule, necessary for the student of human life, who
wishes to see what occurs within a Paris pawnshop, to pledge or redeem
anything himself; the crowd is so large that the absence of his parcel
will be unperceived, and everyone is so intent on his or her own errand
that not a glance, probably, will be bestowed upon him. “How much will
you lend me on this?”--such is the absorbing thought, the sole
preoccupation, which deprives the visitors of all curiosity concerning
what is around them.
[Illustration: THE OPERA HOUSE.]
Entering one of these loan offices, a peculiar odour--which a French
writer with a delicate nose has described as something between the smell
of a barrack and that of a hospital--gives the visitor his first
impression of the place. Scrupulously clean as the depôt is kept, the
air is to some extent affected by the malodorous parcels brought in by
the customers. Even the frequent opening of the doors scarcely relieves
the atmosphere, which is characterised by that most unbearable of all
atmospheric qualities--stuffiness. But the heroic student of life,
bent on observation, fortifies his nose by the aid of philosophy; and
instead of betaking himself to flight, sits down on one of the benches
ranged round the room and affects to await his turn. This room is
divided into two by a partition fitted with doors, one part
accommodating the public, the other being reserved for the employés. The
public compartment is generally very sombre, with no other light than
that which steals through chance apertures: the shopmen’s compartment is
thoroughly illuminated. The sun has been accused by a French writer of
flinging his beams into these pawnshops in order to reveal some of the
most lamentable scenes and acts of human life. But, on the other hand,
the assistants require a good light to examine the miscellaneous
articles submitted to their appraisement.
One curious feature is the silence which reigns in these establishments.
The customers seem to have no tongues, and the money-lenders, by no
means prodigal of words, communicate with their clients chiefly by looks
and gestures. After all, there is little need for conversation, the
business of every visitor being ostensible, and the employés having
simply to say that they will lend such and such a sum on the article
proposed, or--what sickens the heart of some poor wretches who wish to
raise the price of a loaf of bread or a bundle of firewood--that they
will lend nothing on a worthless rag.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE MONT-DE-PIÉTÉ, CHAUSSÉE D’ANTIN.]
To some extent the pawnbroking assistant may be said to control the
destinies of the impecunious public. If he refuses to lend on this
article or that, some merchant will be unable to redeem his honour and
his promissory note, some lover will be unable to keep his appointment
with the girl of his heart, some comedian will not make his début, some
lady of fashion will not give her soirée, and some needy mother will
have to send her family supperless to bed. Here behind this partition
there is no distinction of class. The highest and the lowest ranks of
Parisian society are brought together--a duchess by the side of a
flower-girl, an artist by the side of an artisan. Pride and humility are
here united. Aristocrats, whose souls revolt at the thought of
borrowing, are dragged to the place by necessity, and have to wait, like
the rest, till the assistant is at leisure to inspect their rings and
their diamonds, their silks and their satins.
“For anyone who knows how to observe and divine,” says M. Alfred Delvau,
“the public of a loan office is very interesting. You enter mentally
into the existences of all those widely different characters, dragged
here by such opposite causes, and you leave the place smiling sometimes,
but sad nearly always. Misery--even smiling misery--has nothing of
gaiety; and it is Misery, or her shame-faced sister Want, who drives
hither that crowd of people differing so greatly from one another by
their costume, age, sex, and position.
“First of all, with his elbows resting on the counter, facing the
commissionaire--sworn appraiser of all those rubbish heaps which the
owners wish to turn into gold--lounges a fellow who turns his back on us
and lets us see, beneath his frayed trouser-ends, a pair of naked feet
enclosed in down-at-heel shoes. He comes to pledge his mattress--the
last, the supreme resource!--that mattress which seems to have lost half
its stuffing; or some workman’s tools, which do not look sorry to rest a
little. By his side, and by way of contrast, stands, with brazen air, a
big red-faced woman, red-haired, red-shawled, with a mauve silk dress
and ruffles of white lace, whom I sometimes meet on the footway of the
Rue des Martyrs, and who personifies a certain category of women--the
last category. What does she come to pledge?--her heart? That has long
since wandered away. Her virtue? That has followed her heart. Her wit?
She never had any. What then? Some jewel, without doubt--the last
witness of a last _liaison_. Her ear is at this moment bereft of the
twenty-five francs’ worth of gold which hung in it just now.
“On the wooden bench let into the wall are other persons: two women of
the lower orders, who are estimating beforehand the borrowing value of
the linen they are going to pledge, while the little daughter of one of
them is heedlessly gnawing an apple; a young girl in black, her head
bare, like that of the red woman who has just gone, but more decently
and poorly clad; an Arthur of the Reine Blanche--his hat tilted over his
ear, his hands in his pockets, and looking at the small dog playing at
his feet, rather than look at nothing; then men and women of the
inferior classes with their children, talking about the hard times and
the high rents; then placid citizens; then careworn flower-girls; then
other people more or less interesting--but always interested. The man
who pledges his mattress, the woman who pledges her linen, the
sempstress who pledges her dress, feel no doubt a sharp pang in taking
leave of objects so indispensable; but that is as nothing compared with
the poignant anguish of the man who, for food, or the woman who, to feed
her child, is obliged to part with love tokens or family jewels, as
sacred as the vases of a church: the ancestral watch which has marked so
many hours of joy and pain; the locket enclosing that lock of hair; the
bracelet of that dead mistress who will never die in the heart of him
she has left for ever; the ring given by that lover who still lives but
who is for ever dead to the woman he has deserted.
“It is the physiognomy of the borrowers that I have just been sketching,
of those wretches of all ranks, who are forced by some dire necessity,
whether accidental or normal, to come and pledge their clothes or their
jewels; to exhaust--in order not to die of hunger or to meet an overdue
debt--the resources which are still at their disposal. Yet, by the side
of these careworn, despairing faces, inscribed with poignant melancholy,
or, in some cases, resignation, are the radiant faces of those who have
come to redeem their jewels and their clothes. These are not silent like
the rest. They do not glide in, like furtive shadows amongst other
shadows. You hear them coming before you see them: they ascend the steps
with tremendous haste. It is a question of arriving before the shop is
closed, for it is Saturday, the morrow is Sunday, and they have come up
panting like a pair of forge-bellows.
“There is a run of business on Saturday night, and the assistants behind
the counter, although they, too, love Sunday with the repose it brings,
almost dread it as being preceded by such a rush of work. And these
people who come to redeem are not so easy to manage as the poor wretches
who pledge, the latter being mild and patient, full of anguish though
they are; the former noisy, exacting, and sometimes insolent. The
relationship is changed, in fact. One set come to demand something,
almost an act of charity--for that is the nature of the request,
although the pledge is worth more than the loan granted. The other set
come to make what is almost a gift; for the pledge they withdraw is not
always worth the price that has been estimated, and if they did not
withdraw it the commissionaire would perhaps lose something on it,
instead of gaining. You see the difference. And then, again, it is
usually men who pledge and women who redeem. In pledging, a signature is
required; a certificate alone suffices for the redemption. I leave you
to imagine the behaviour of those gossips, proud of “unhooking” from the
accursed “nail” the dress or the jacket which has hung there six months,
and which is now as indispensable for going to the dance or the
promenade as it was useless six months since, when it was a question of
procuring a dinner or paying for a bed.”
[Illustration: THE JEWELLERY STORES, RUE DES BLANCS MANTEAUX.]
The Parisian pawnbroker, being simply a Government official, differs
necessarily from the pawnbroker of London. The latter is the most
independent and insolent of all shopkeepers. He makes very little
distinction between those who come to pledge and those who come to
redeem. If his Saturday-night customers who come to take their things
out of pawn were to give themselves such airs as the Parisian
pledge-redeemers already described, he would insult them to their face,
and keep them waiting till they had learnt better manners. He feels
indebted to no one. He does not seek regular customers, for he knows
that the stream of the impecunious will never cease to flow into his
shop, that if one does not come another will, and that the people who
come to redeem are seriously in want of their property, and must pay him
the amount of the loan and interest no matter whether he is bearish or
polite.
The branch establishments, with their commissionaires, having been
spoken of, let us now glance at the great Mont-de-Piété of Paris,
situated in the Rue des Blancs Manteaux. This central establishment
dates from the reign of Louis XVI., who founded it by letters patent in
1777. The work of money-lending was at once commenced, but not in the
buildings specially constructed in the Rue des Blancs Manteaux, beside
the convent of the Benedictines of Saint-Maur, since these buildings
were not completed until 1786. It is interesting to follow the different
phases through which this vast establishment of public utility, designed
to “put an end to the abuses of usury,” has passed, until now it
receives upwards of twenty-five million pledges annually. That these
pledges present an inconceivably great variety of objects may well be
supposed. On this subject M. Blaize, author of the “Traité des
Monts-de-Piété,” has written descriptively enough as follows:--“Let us
stop at the first floor. This is the quarter of the aristocracy; the
Faubourg Saint-Germain, the Chaussée d’Antin of our borrowers. Here are
the first and second divisions--those of the “jewels”--where the most
precious objects are deposited. I open the ‘four-figure cupboards’--such
is the name we give to those cupboards of iron which contain pledges on
which a thousand francs or more have been advanced. Great Heaven! what
riches! Sparkling sprays, strings of diamonds, trinkets calculated to
turn the heads of duchesses! Silver services fit to adorn the table of a
king! In these regions of want--opulent want and necessitous want--one’s
eyes must not see everything nor one’s ears listen to everything: let us
pass on. We take our way through the passages which are bordered on each
side with wealth-laden shelves. Look at those thousands of watches,
chains, bracelets, jewels of every kind; that countless mass of objects
of art, of luxury, of utility, of vanity, or of coquetry.
[Illustration: IN THE RUE CAPRON BRANCH OF THE MONT-DE-PIÉTÉ.]
“We are now on the second floor. Here commences the ordinary goods
department. The floor bends beneath the weight of the million pledges
which are taken in every year. Here are ranged, in admirable order,
dresses, coats, shirts, table-cloths, blankets, and indeed every object
of household use or of the toilet; vestments of silks or of rags; books;
tools. Let us explore the next two storeys. The same arrangements, the
same symmetry: cases filled with boxes, bandboxes, and parcels. The
walls of the staircases are covered with pictures, mirrors, metronomes,
which have not found a place in the interior of the divisions. Let us go
higher still. We are now in the doleful city, in the region of sorrow
and want. Look at those piles of mattresses so highly packed. They are
the very last tribute of misery, which, after being despoiled of its
vestments, has given us its last pledge, and which sleeps on a heap of
straw, where shiver, in a fetid attic, around an emaciated mother,
children blue with cold, with wasted cheeks, hollow eyes, and a smile
sad and sweet. Poor dear little creatures! In order to live, they ask
for nothing but a little air and bread! Let us descend to the ground
floor.
[Illustration: THE SALE-ROOM OF THE MONT-DE-PIÉTÉ, RUE DES BLANCS
MANTEAUX.]
“The warehouses are used for new merchandise, such as linen, cloth,
muslins, mirrors of large dimensions, bronze and copper articles, etc.
Things which are too heavy to be carried above, such as vices, anvils,
and cauldrons, occupy a considerable space below. Do not let us forget
the fountain warehouse. At the end of the autumn the cocoa-hawkers bring
us their fountains and exchange them for a sum which, small as it is,
enables them to follow the little industries by which they are able to
live on through the winter.... At the first sunshine of the spring they
come to redeem the pledge they have left with us, and, with their little
bell in their hand, gaily betake themselves once more to the Champs
Élysées and the boulevards.
“Each article bears a ticket, each ticket an even number if it is a
pledge, an uneven number if it is a renewal. As often as an article is
renewed, a fresh ticket is sewn over that of the preceding year (you can
count ten on this particular pledge--nine renewals, that is to say). The
loan is only six francs--six francs! But it is a fortune to those whose
work does not even suffice for the wants of the day. Listen to a simple
and touching story. Some years ago one of our predecessors noticed a
little packet which had upon it a whole series of renewal-tickets, and
on which but three francs had been lent. He wrote to the borrower: a
woman presented herself in reply. ‘Why,’ said he, ‘do you not redeem
this pledge?’ ‘I am too poor,’ was the answer. ‘You attach a great
value, then, to this article?’ ‘Ah, sir, it is all that remains to me of
my mother.’ The director gave her back the packet, which contained an
old-fashioned petticoat. The poor woman bore away this treasure of
filial piety with tears of joy. Instances of this kind are by no means
rare, and they prove that if indiscretion and misconduct bring some
borrowers to the Mont-de-Piété, the greater number are impelled thither
by causes which are highly honourable. The history of many a pledge is a
lamentable page in the drama of human life, so full of nameless miseries
and unknown misfortunes. The whole of the property does not return to
its owners; at least six per cent. does not. What efforts are made to
prevent this or that article from falling into the hands of the brokers,
who will sell it for a mere trifle at the sale-rooms! On the 26th of
June, 1849, a gold watch was sold which had been pledged on the 8th of
January, 1817, for eighty francs. It had been renewed for the last time
on the 8th of December, 1847. The borrower, who had not been able to
redeem it, had successively paid 20 francs 50 centimes for the right of
renewal. We made inquiries for him. He was dead. What a mystery of
tenderness was implied in so long a constancy!”