THE CITY OF THE SUN.
It is only with weeks of experience that the searcher into the under
world of Paris life comes to any sense of real conditions, or discovers
in what directions to look for the misery which seldom floats to the
surface, and which even wears the face of content. That there are no
slums, and that acute suffering is in the nature of things impossible,
is the first conviction, and it remains in degree even when both misery
and its lurking-places have become familiar sights. Paris itself, gay,
bright, beautiful, beloved of every dweller within its walls, so
dominates that shadows seem impossible, and as one watches the eager
throng in boulevard or avenue, or the laughing, chattering groups before
even the poorest café, other life than this sinks out of sight. The most
meagrely paid needlewoman, the most overworked toiler in trades,
indoors or out, seizes any stray moment for rest or small pleasures, and
from a half-franc bottle of wine, or some pretence of lemonade or sugar
water, extracts entertainment for half a dozen. The pressure in actual
fact remains the same. Always behind in the shadow lurks starvation, and
there is one street, now very nearly wiped out, known to its inhabitants
still as "_la rue où l'on ne meurt jamais_"--the street where one never
dies, since every soul therein finds their last bed in the hospital.
This is the _quartier_ Mouffetard, where bits of old Paris are still
discernible, and where strange trades are in operation; industries which
only a people so pinched and driven by sharp necessity could ever have
invented.
The descent to these is a gradual one, and most often the women who are
found in them have known more than one occupation, and have been, in the
beginning at least, needlewomen of greater or less degree of skill.
Depression of wages, which now are at the lowest limit of subsistence,
drives them into experiments in other directions, and often failing
sight or utter weariness of the monotonous employment is another cause.
These form but a small proportion of such workers, who generally are a
species of guild, a family having begun some small new industry and
gradually drawn in others, till a body of workers in the same line is
formed, strong enough to withstand any interlopers.
"What becomes of the women who are too old to sew, and who have never
gained skill enough to earn more than a bare living?" I asked one day of
a seamstress whose own skill was unquestioned, but who, even with this
in her favor, averages only three francs a day.
"They do many things, madame. One who is my neighbor is now scrubber and
cleaner, and is happily friends with a '_concierge_,' who allows her to
aid him. That is a difficulty for all who would do that work. It is that
the '_concierges_,' whether men or women, think that any pay from the
'_locataires_' must be for them; and so they will never tell the tenant
of a woman who seeks work, but will say always, 'It is I who can do it
all. One cannot trust these from the outside.' But for her, as I say,
there is opportunity, and at last she has food, when as '_couturière_'
it was quite--yes, quite impossible. There was a child, an idiot--the
child of her daughter who is dead, and from whom she refuses always to
be separated, and she sews always on the sewing-machine, till sickness
comes, and it is sold for rent and many things. She is proud. She has
not wished to scrub and clean, but for such work is twenty-five centimes
an hour, and often food that the tenant does not wish. At times they
give her less, and in any case one calculates always the time and
watches very closely, but for her, at least, is more money than for many
years; sometimes even three francs, if a day has been good. But that is
but seldom, and she must carry her own soap and brush, and pay for all.
"That is one way, and there is another that fills me with terror,
madame, lest I, too, may one day find myself in it. It is last and worst
of all for women, I think. It is when they wear '_le cachemire
d'osier_.' You do not know it, madame. It is the chiffonieress basket
which she bears as a badge, and which she hangs at night, it may be, in
the City of the Sun. _Voila_, madame. There are now two who are on their
way. If madame has curiosity, it is easy to follow them."
"But the City of the Sun? What is that? Do you mean Paris?"
"No, madame. It is a mockery like the '_cachemire d'osier_.' You will
see."
It is in this following that the polished veneer which makes the outward
Paris showed what may lie beneath. Certainly, no one who walks through
the Avenue Victor Hugo, one of the twelve avenues radiating from the Arc
de Triomphe, and including some of the gayest and most brilliant life of
modern Paris, the creation of Napoleon III. and of Baron Haussman, would
dream that hint of corruption could enter in. The ancient Rue de la
Révolte has changed form and title, and the beautiful avenue is no
dishonor to its present name. But far down there opens nearly
imperceptibly a narrow alley almost subterranean, and it is through this
alley that the two figures which had moved silently down the avenue
passed and went on; the man solid and compact, as if well-fed, his face
as he turned, however, giving the lie to such impression, but his keen
alert eyes seeing every shade of difference in the merest scrap of
calico or tufts of hair. For the woman, it was plain to see why the
needle had been of small service, her wandering, undecided blue eyes
passing over everything to which the man's hook had not first directed
her.
Through the narrow way the pair passed into a sombre court, closed at
the end by a door of wood with rusty latch, which creaks and objects as
one seeks to lift it. Once within, and the door closed, the place has no
reminder of the Paris just without. On the contrary, it might be a bit
from the beggars' quarter in a village of Syria or Palestine, for here
is only a line of flat-roofed huts, the walls whitewashed, the floors
level with the soil, and the sun of the warm spring day pouring down
upon sleeping dogs, and heaps of refuse alternating with piles of rags,
in the midst of which work two or three women, silent at present, and
barely looking up as the new comers lay down their burdens. A fat yet
acrid odor rises about these huts, drawn out from the rags by the
afternoon heat; yet, repulsive as it is, there is more sense of
cleanliness about it than in the hideous basements where the same trade
is plied in London or New York. There is a space here not yet occupied
by buildings. The line of huts faces the south; a fence encloses them;
and so silent and alone seems the spot that it is easy to understand why
it bears its own individual name, and to the colony of _chiffoniers_ who
dwell here has long been known as the City of the Sun. Doors stand open
freely; honesty is a tradition of this profession; and the police know
that these delvers in dust heaps will bring to them any precious object
found therein, and that he who should remove the slightest article from
one of these dwellings would be banished ignominiously and deprived of
all rights of association.
These huts are all alike; two rooms, the larger reserved for the bed,
the smaller for kitchen, and in both rags of every variety. In the
corner is a heap chiefly of silk, wool, and linen. This is the pile from
which rent is to come, and every precious bit goes to it, since rent
here is paid in advance,--three francs a week for the hut alone, and
twenty francs a month if a scrap of court is added in which the rags can
be sorted. On a fixed day the proprietor appears, and, if the sum is not
ready, simply carries off the door and windows, and expels the unlucky
tenant with no further formality. How the stipulated amount is scraped
together, only the half-starved _chiffoniers_ know, since prices have
fallen so that the hundred kilogrammes (about two hundred pounds) of
rags, which, before the war, sold for eighty francs, to-day bring
precisely eight.
"In a good day, madame," said the woman, "we can earn three francs. We
are always together, I and my man, and we never cease. But the dead
season comes, that is, the summer, when Paris is in the country or at
the sea; then we can earn never more than two francs, and often not more
than thirty sous, when they clean the streets so much, and so carry away
everything that little is left for us. It is five years that I have
followed my man, and he is born to it, and works always, but the time is
changed. There is no more a living in this, or in anything we can do. I
have gone hungry when it is the sewing that I do, and I go hungry now,
but I am not alone. It is so for all of us, and we care not if only the
children are fed. They are not, and it is because of them that we
suffer. See, madame, this is the child of my niece, who came with me
here, and has also her man, but never has any one of them eaten to the
full, even of crusts, which often are in what we gather."
The child ran toward her,--a girl three or four years old, wearing a
pair of women's shoes ten times too large, and the remainder of a
chemise. Other clothing had not been attempted, or was not considered
necessary, and the child looked up with hollow eyes and a face pinched
and sharpened by want, while the swollen belly of the meagre little
figure showed how wretched had been the supply they called food. All day
these children fare as they can, since all day the parents must range
the streets collecting their harvest; but fortunately for such future as
they can know, these little savages, fighting together like wild
animals, have within the last twenty years been gradually gathered into
free schools, the work beginning with a devoted woman, who, having seen
the City of the Sun, never rested till a school was opened for its
children. All effort, however, was quite fruitless, till an old
_chiffonier_, also once a seamstress, united with her, and persuaded the
mothers that they must prepare their children, or, at least, not prevent
them from going. At present the school stands as one of the wisest
philanthropies of Paris, but neither this, nor any other attempt to
better conditions, alters the fact that twelve and fourteen hours of
labor have for sole result from thirty to forty sous a day, and that
this sum represents the earnings of the average women-workers of Paris,
the better class of trades and occupations being no less limited in
possibilities.