[ CHAPTER VII]
“POCHARD”
Drunkards are not frequent sights in the Quarter; and yet when these people do get drunk, they become as irresponsible as maniacs. Excitable to a degree even when sober, these most wretched among the poor when drunk often appear in front of a café—gaunt, wild-eyed, haggard, and filthy—singing in boisterous tones or reciting to you with tense voices a jumble of meaningless thoughts.
The man with the matted hair, and toes out of his boots, will fold his arms melodramatically, and regard you for some moments as you sit in front of him on the terrace. Then he will vent upon you a torrent of abuse, ending in some jumble of socialistic ideas of his own concoction. When he has finished, he will fold his arms again and move on to the next table. He is crazy with absinthe, and no one pays any attention to him. On he strides up the “Boul’ Miche,” past the cafés, continuing his ravings. As long as he is moderately peaceful and confines his wandering brain to gesticulations and speech, he is let alone by the police.
You will see sometimes a man and a woman—a teamster out of work or with his wages for the day, and with him a creature—a blear-eyed, slatternly looking woman, in a filthy calico gown. The man clutches her arm, as they sing and stagger up past the cafés. The woman holds in her claw-like hand a half-empty bottle of cheap red wine. Now and then they stop and share it; the man staggers on; the woman leers and dances and sings; a crowd forms about them. Some years ago this poor girl sat on Friday afternoons in the Luxembourg Gardens—her white parasol on her knees, her dainty, white kid-slippered feet resting on the little stool which the old lady, who rents the chairs, used to bring
her. She was regarded as a bonne camarade in those days among the students—one of the idols of the Quarter! But she became impossible, and then an outcast! That women should become outcasts through the hopelessness of their position or the breaking down of their brains can be understood, but that men of ability should sink into the dregs and stay there seems incredible. But it is often so.