IN THE RUE JEANNE D'ARC.
"No, madame, unless one has genius or much money in the beginning, it is
only possible to live, and sometimes one believes that it is not living.
If it were not that all in Paris is so beautiful, how would I have borne
much that I have known? But always, when even the hunger has been most
sharp, has been the sky so blue and clear, and the sun shining down on
the beautiful boulevards, and all so bright, so gay, why should I show a
face of sorrow?
"I have seen the war, it is true. I have known almost the starving, for
in those days all go hungry; most of all, those who have little to buy
with. But one bears the hunger better when one has been born to it, and
that is what has been for me.
"In the Rue Jeanne d'Arc we are all hungry, and it is as true to-day,
yes, more true, than in the days when I was young. The charitable, who
give more and more each year in Paris, will not believe there is such a
quarter, but for us, we know. Have you seen the Rue Jeanne d'Arc,
madame? Do you know what can be for this Paris that is so fair?"
This question came in the square before old Nôtre Dame, still the church
of the poor, its gray towers and carved portals dearer to them than to
the Paris which counts the Madeleine a far better possession than this
noblest of all French cathedrals. Save for such reminder this quarter
might have remained unvisited, since even philanthropic Paris appears to
have little or no knowledge of it, and it is far beyond the distance to
which the most curious tourist is likely to penetrate.
On by the Halle aux Vins, with its stifling, fermenting, alcoholic
odors, and then by the Jardin des Plantes, and beyond, the blank walls
of many manufactories stretching along the Seine,--this for one shore.
On the other lies La Rapée, with the windows of innumerable wine shops
flaming in the sun, and further on, Bercy, the ship bank of the river,
covered with wine-casks and a throng of drays and draymen; of
_débardeurs_, whose business it is to unload wood or to break up old
boats into material for kindling; and of the host whose business is on
and about the river.
They are of the same order as the London Dock laborers, and, like the
majority of this class there and here, know every extremity of want. But
it is a pretty picture from which one turns from the right, passing up
the noisy boulevard of the Gare d'Orléans, toward the quarter of the
Gobelins. This quarter has its independent name and place like the "City
of the Sun." Like that it knows every depth of poverty, but, unlike
that, sunshine and space are quite unknown. The buildings are piled
together, great masses separated by blind alleys, some fifteen hundred
lodgings in all, and the owner of many of them is a prominent
philanthropist, whose name heads the list of directors for various
charitable institutions, but whose feet, we must believe, can hardly be
acquainted with those alleys and stairways, narrow, dark, and foul. The
unpaved ways show gaping holes in which the greasy mud lies thick or
mingles with the pools of standing water, fed from every house and
fermenting with rottenness.
The sidewalks, once asphalted, are cracked in long seams and holes,
where the same water does its work, and where hideous exhalations poison
the air. Within it is still worse; filth trickles down the walls and
mingles under foot, the corridors seeming rather sewers than passages
for human beings, while the cellars are simply reservoirs for the same
deposits. Above in the narrow rooms huddle the dwellers in those
lodgings; whole families in one room, its single window looking on a
dark court where one sees swarms of half-naked children, massed together
like so many maggots, their flabby flesh a dirty white, their faces
prematurely aged and with a diabolical intelligence in their sharp eyes.
The children are always old. The old have reached the extremity of
hideous decrepitude. One would say that these veins had never held
healthy human blood, and that for young and old pus had become its
substitute. To these homes return many of the men who wait for work on
the quays, and thus this population, born to crime and every foulness
that human life can know, has its proportion also of honest workers,
whose fortunes have ebbed till they have been left stranded in this
slime, of a quality so tenacious that escape seems impossible. Many of
the lodgings are unoccupied, and at night they become simply dens of
wild beasts,--men and boys who live by petty thieving climbing the
walls, stealing along the passages and up the dark stairways, and
sheltering themselves in every niche and corner. Now and then, when the
outrages become too evident, the police descend suddenly on the
drinking, shouting tenants at will, and for a day or two there is peace
for the rest.
But the quarter is shut in and hedged about by streets of a general
respectable appearance, and thus it is felt to be impossible that such a
spot can exist. It is, however, the breeding-ground of criminals; and
each year swells the quota, whose lives can have but one ending, and who
cost the city in the end many times the amount that in the beginning
would have insured decent homes and training in an industrial school.
It is only the dregs of humanity that remain in such quarters. The
better elements, unless compelled by starvation, flee from it, though
with the tenacity of the Parisian for his own _quartier_, they settle
near it still. All about are strange trades, invented often by the
followers of them, and unknown outside a country which has learned every
method of not only turning an honest penny, but doing it in the most
effective way. Among them all not one can be stranger than that adopted
by Madame Agathe, whose soft voice and plaintive intonations are in
sharpest contrast with her huge proportions, and who began life as one
of the great army of _couturières_.
With failing eyesight and the terror of starvation upon her, she went
one Sunday, with her last two francs in her pocket, to share them with a
sick cousin, who had been one of the workmen at the Jardin des Plantes.
He, too, was in despair; for an accident had taken from him the use of
his right arm, and there were two children who must be fed.
"What to do! what to do!" he cried; and then, as he saw the tears
running down Madame Agathe's cheeks, he in turn, with the ease of his
nation, wept also.
"That is what has determined me," said Madame Agathe, as not long ago
she told of the day when she had given up hope. "Tears are for women,
and even for them it is not well to shed many. I say to myself, 'I am on
the earth: the good God wills it. There must be something that I may do,
and that will help these even more helpless ones.' And as I say it there
comes in from the Jardin des Plantes a man who has been a companion to
Pierre, and who, as he sees him so despairing, first embraces him and
then tells him this: 'Pierre, it is true you cannot again hold spade or
hoe, but here is something. There are never enough ants' eggs for the
zoölogical gardens and for those that feed pheasants. I know already one
woman who supplies them, and she will some day be rich. Why not you
also?'
"'I have no hands for any work. This hand is useless,' said Pierre; and
then I spoke: 'But mine are here and are strong; you have eyes, which
for me are well nigh gone. It shall be your eyes and my hands that will
do this work if I may learn all the ways. It is only that ants have
teeth and bite and we must fear that.'
"Then Claude has laughed. 'Teeth! yes, if you will, but they do not gnaw
like hunger. Come with me, Madame Agathe, and we will talk with her of
whom I speak,--she who knows it all and has the good heart and will tell
and help.'
"That is how I begun, madame. It is Blanche who has taught me, and I
have lived with her a month and watched all her ways, and learned all
that these ants can do. At first one must renounce thought to be
anything but bitten, yes, bitten always. See me, I am tanned as leather.
It is the skin of an apple that has dried that you see on me and with
her it is the same. We wear pantaloons and gauntlets of leather. It is
almost a coat of mail, but close it as one may, they are always
underneath. She can sleep when hundreds run on her, but I, I am frantic
at first till I am bitten everywhere; and then, at last, as with
bee-keepers, I can be poisoned no longer, and they may gnaw as they
will. They are very lively. They love the heat, and we must keep up
great heat always and feed them very high, and then they lay many eggs,
which we gather for the bird-breeders and others who want them. Twice we
have been forced to move, since our ants will wander, and the neighbors
complain when their pantries are full, and justly.
"Now eight and even ten sacks of ants come to me from Germany and many
places. I am busy always, and there is money enough for all; but I have
sent the children away, for they are girls, and for each I save a little
_dot_, and I will not have them know this _métier_, and be so bitten
that they, too, are tanned like me and have never more their pretty
fresh skins. Near us now, madame, is another woman, but her trade is
less good than mine. She is a bait-breeder, '_une éleveure des
asticots_.' All about her room hang old stockings. In them she puts bran
and flour and bits of cork, and soon the red worms show themselves, and
once there she has no more thought than to let them grow and to sell
them for eight and sometimes ten sous a hundred. But I like better my
ants, which are clean, and which, if they run everywhere, do not
wriggle nor squirm nor make you think always of corruption and death.
She breeds other worms for the fishermen, who buy them at the shops for
fishing tackle; but often she also buys worms from others and feeds them
a little time till plump, but I find them even more disgusting.
"An ant has so much intelligence. I can watch mine, madame, as if they
were people almost, and would even believe they know me. But that does
not hinder them from biting me; no, never; and because they are always
upon me the neighbors and all who know me have chosen to call me the
'sister-in-law of ants.'
"It is not a trade for women, it is true, save for one only here and
there. But it is better than sewing; yes, far better; and I wish all
women might have something as good, since now I prosper when once I ate
only bread. What shall be done, madame, to make it that more than bread
becomes possible for these workers?"