There are plenty of persons still living in the Latin Quarter who knew the originals of the eccentric Quartier types immortalised by Jules Vallès in his phenomenal Réfractaires.
Fontan-Crusoe, a genuine bachelor of arts, who slept one hundred and eleven consecutive nights under a tree near the fortifications, spent for nourishment from three to five sous a day which he earned by selling in the street his two principal works, Le Spectre Noir: Elégie and Un Galop à travers l’Espace.
Poupelin, called also “Mes Papiers,” he of the enormous yellow felt, “pantalon d’enfant,” and “redingote de centennaire,” who spent his time seeking titled office and recommendations therefor, when he was not occupied in one of the three positions which he accepted with equal alacrity and in which he was equally efficient,—or inefficient,—namely, teacher, school usher, and cook.
And M. Chaque, “Orientaliste,” another genuine bachelier, who had a useful habit of carrying rice pudding in his hat and omelettes and beef à la mode in his pockets,—ex-professor of a colonial school; author of a volume of travels in Greece (published by a reputable firm) with which he beset Greek enthusiasts orally and successfully; a constant reader of the Revue des Deux Mondes, to which he had, once on a time, contributed an article; communicant of all the Christian or pagan sects that had churches or temples in Paris; privileged hanger-on of gaming-houses and soldiers’ barracks; razor-sharpener and professional weeper at the cemetery of Montparnasse.
Two vagrant types (equally grotesque with those of Vallès), who are now dead, but whom one need not have been long associated with the Quartier to remember, were Eugène Cochet and Amédée Cloux.
Cochet was an ex-prefect of the Department of the Eure, a rhymester and the author of an unpublished work of “philosophical reflections,” who depended for his sustenance on the bounty of one or two restaurants and the soupes populaires, and who had a mania for decorations, like Poupelin. The students, who made Cochet the butt of a great deal of good-natured chaffing, which he accepted gratefully as so much tribute to his worth, formally invested him one day with the star of the Legion of Honour (attached to a flaming red cravat) and with the insignia of ten fantastic foreign orders, notably with that of the Garter and that of the Green Elephant, which last consisted of a zinc elephant, painted green, suspended from a bailiff’s chain.
Amédée Cloux, poet, emulated the literary forgeries of Chatterton at closer range. He had a marvellous facility for copying poetic styles, and he got his living for a time by the deaths of his more illustrious brother poets. As soon as a well-known poet died, he produced imitations of his poetry, which he sold as posthumous works. His most successful efforts, “Le Chien Mort,” attributed by him to Baudelaire, and “Plus de Représailles” and “L’Ode à la Colonne Déboulonnée,” purporting to be by Eugène Vermesch, deceived both the public and the experts until the good Cloux, who was more of a joker than a vulgar swindler, acknowledged his ruse.
Of the freaks who now perch in (for they can hardly be said to inhabit) the Quartier Latin, far and away the most famous is Bibi-la-Purée,
“Qui porte en son cœur un vaste mépris Pour quiconque n’est Bohème ni poète.”