READY FOR AN OUTING
The types composing this multitude are as varied as the ever-changing pattern in a kaleidoscope. Every step you take brings you past a dozen individuals each one different from the other. Turn quickly, and count them if you can. The last moment has brought you by a motley score of merchants, a cocotte, an Arab sheik, a ragpicker, a lady, a Japanese, a boulevardier, a simple soldier, an officier, two gamins, and a pretty girl with a bundle. As you turn, a camelot, running in a pair of dirty canvas slippers, screams the latest edition of “La Patrie” in your ears, and a man in a top hat begs your pardon for having jostled you in the ribs. There is no time for formalities—he disappears in the stream and you are borne on with the tide to the corner. Taking advantage of a second’s halt of the passing cabs, you dodge over to the opposite curb and into another section of the multitude. The crossing which you have just left behind is noisy with the snapping of whips and swearing cochers. In many of these carriages one catches a glimpse of fair women. In a passing cab a blanchisseuse and her sweetheart are enjoying a chance drive, with madame’s tardy wash deposited in a huge basket beside the good-natured cocher. Old women pushing small carts cry their wares: “Les belles pêches, voilà les belles pêches, dix sous la livre!”
Three long-haired students go whistling by. In the midst of the throng you hear bits of conversation:
“Listen!” says a pretty woman radiant over some news to her companion—but they are gone.
Two more go by furious. “It was he then who lied!” cries one to the other—but the crowd swallows them up.
Sentences from strange languages reach your ears in the throng, scraps of Turkish, the guttural of some passing savage, now the cold drawl of an Englishman, again the soft lisp from a Spanish signorita.
“Say, Bill, you’d orter seen Charley, they didn’t do a thing to him, I told Lil, says I ...” and two fellow-citizens stride on.
At the corner, jostled by the human tide, two chic demoiselles fresh from a rehearsal at a nearby theater pass, laughing over some recent adventure. The next instant they are climbing to the top of an omnibus and are rattling away toward La Villette.
At night this great highway is ablaze with lights and the swarm still passes, augmented by the masses who have poured from the shops. By eight the restaurants and theaters are full to overflowing, but there is no diminution in the stream of passers-by along the boulevards. The only hours when the life there seems slack is when the masses are at work or in bed. There are no people who enjoy their city more than do Parisians, or who use its thoroughfares so much as a place of pleasure.
The cafés along the boulevards are frequented by a vast clientèle of men and women of every clime and occupation. These cafés are favorite places for rendezvous. In one of them a man glances from time to time to his watch over his paper as he awaits his friend. At the next table a blonde with steel-gray eyes awaits someone, she does not know whom. But there is no hurry in either case.