A Wanderer in Paris

by E. V. Lucas

LA VIERGE AU DONATEUR
J. VAN EYCK
(Louvre)

The Hôtel des Monnaies, close by the Beaux Arts, is another surprise. One would expect in such a country as France, with its meticulously exact control of its public offices, that its Mint, the institution in which its money was made, would be a miracle of precision and efficiency. Efficiency it may have; but its proceedings are casual beyond belief: the workmen in the furnaces loaf and smoke and stare at the visitors and exchange comments on them; the floors are cluttered up with lumber; the walls are dirty; the doors do not fit. A very considerable amount of work seems to be accomplished—there are machines constantly in movement which turn out scores of coins a minute, not only for France but for her few and dispiriting colonies and for other countries; and yet the feeling which one has is that France here is noticeably below herself.

I was shown round by a very charming attendant, who handled the new coins as though he loved them and took precisely that pride in the place that the Government seems to lack. The design on the French franc, although it ought to be cut, I think, a little deeper, a little more boldly, is very attractive, both obverse and reverse, and it is a pleasant sight to see the bright creatures tumbling out of the machine as fast as one can count. Pleasanter still is it to the frail human eye when the same process is repeated with golden Louis'—baskets full of which stand negligently about as though it were the cave of the Forty Thieves.

An Englishman's perhaps indiscreet questions as to what precautions were taken to prevent leakage amused the guide beyond all reason. "It is impossible," he said; "the coins are weighed. They must correspond to the prescribed weight." "But who," my countryman went on, in the relentless English way, "checks the weigher?" "Another," said the guide. "But a time must come," continued the Briton, who probably had a business of his own and had suffered, "when there is no one left to check—when the last man of all is officiating: how then?" Our guide laughed very happily, and repeated that there were no thieves there; and I daresay he is right. "Perhaps," I said, to the English inquisitor, "perhaps, like assistants in sweet shops, they are allowed at first to help themselves so much that they acquire a disgust for money." He looked at me with eyes of stone. I think he had Scotch blood. "Perhaps," he said at last.

My own contribution to the guide's entertainment was the production, before a machine that was shooting five-franc pieces into a bowl at the rate of one a second, of the four bad (démonétisé) coins of the same value which had been forced upon me during the few days I had then been in Paris. They gave immense delight. Several mintners (or whatever they are called) stopped working in order to join in the inspection. It was the general opinion that I had been badly treated: although, of course, I ought to have known. Three of the coins were simply those of other nations no longer current in France, and for them I could get from two to three francs each at an exchange. Unless, of course, a man of the world put in, I liked to sell them to a waiter, and then I should get perhaps a slightly better price. "Be careful, however," said he, "that he does not give them back to you in the next change." The fourth coin was frankly base metal and ought not to have taken in a child. That, by the way, was given to me at a Post Office, the one under the Bourse, and I find that Post Offices are notorious for this habit with foreigners. The mintners generally agreed that it was a scandal, but they did so without heat—bearing indeed this misfortune (not their own) very much as their countryman La Rochefoucauld had observed men to do.

After the coins we saw the medal-stampers at work, each seated in a little hole in the ground before his press. The French have a natural gift for the designing of medals, and they are interested in them as souvenirs not only of public but of private events—such as silver weddings, birthdays and other anniversaries. Upstairs there is a collection of medals by the best designers—such as Roty, Patey, Carial, Chaplain, Dupuis, Dupré—many of them charming. Here also are collections of the world's coinage and of historical French medals.

CHAPTER XI
THE LATIN QUARTER

Old Prints—Procope, Tortoni, and Le Père Lunette—The Luxembourg Palace—Rodin—Modern Paintings—A Sinister Crypt—A Garden of Sculpture—The Students of the Latin Quarter—The Sorbonne—A Beautiful Museum—The Cluny's Treasures—Marat and Danton—Old Streets and Dirty—The River Bièvre—Inspired Topography—Dante in Paris.