The Real Latin Quarter

Transcriber’s Note: Variations in hyphenation, capitalization, and spelling have been retained as in the original. Minor printer errors have been amended without note. Obvious typos have been amended and are underlined in the text: original text appears in a mouse hoverbox over each amended typo, like this. Some illustrations have been relocated for better flow, causing some page numbers to be removed. Other missing page numbers are due to blank pages being removed.
IN THE GARDENS OF THE LUXEMBOURG WATER COLOR DRAWING BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH PARIS, 1901
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR INTRODUCTION AND FRONTISPIECE BY
Copyright, 1901 by Funk & Wagnalls Company Registered at Stationers’ Hall London, England Printed in the United States of America Published in November, 1901

“Cocher, drive to the rue Falguière”—this in my best restaurant French.
The man with the varnished hat shrugged his shoulders, and raised his eyebrows in doubt. He evidently had never heard of the rue Falguière. “Yes, rue Falguière, the old rue des Fourneaux,” I continued.
Cabby’s face broke out into a smile. “Ah, oui, oui, le Quartier Latin.”
And it was at the end of this crooked street, through a lane that led into a half court flanked by a row of studio buildings, and up one pair of dingy waxed steps, that I found a door bearing the name of the author of the following pages—his visiting card impaled on a tack. He was in his shirt-sleeves—the thermometer stood at 90° outside—working at his desk, surrounded by half-finished sketches and manuscript.
The man himself I had met before—I had known him for years, in fact—but the surroundings were new to me. So too were his methods of work.
Nowadays when a man would write of the Siege of Peking or the relief of some South African town with the unpronounceable name, his habit is to rent a room on an up-town avenue, move in an inkstand and pad, and a collection of illustrated papers and encyclopedias. This writer on the rue Falguière chose a different plan. He would come back year after year, and study his subject and compile his impressions of the Quarter in the very atmosphere of the place itself; within a stone’s throw of the Luxembourg Gardens and the Panthéon; near the cafés and the Bullier; next door, if you please, to the public laundry where his washerwoman pays a few sous for the privilege of pounding his clothes into holes.