“Bonjour, madame!” says the well-to-do proprietor of the tobacco-shop and café to an old woman buying a sou’s worth of snuff.
“Bonjour, monsieur,” replies the woman with a nod.
“Merci, madame,” continues the fat patron as he drops the sou into his till.
“Merci, monsieur—merci!” and she secretes the package in her netted reticule, and hobbles out into the sunny street, while the patron attends to the wants of three draymen who have clambered down from their heavy carts for a friendly chat and a little vermouth. A polished zinc bar runs the length of the low-ceilinged room; a narrow, winding stairway in one corner leads to the living apartments above. Behind the bar shine three well-polished square mirrors, and ranged in front of these, each in its zinc rack, are the favorite beverages of the Quarter—anisette, absinthe, menthe, grenadine—each in zinc-stoppered bottles, like the ones in the barber-shops.
At the end of the little bar a cocher is having his morning tipple, the black brim of his yellow glazed hat resting on his coarse red ears. He is in his shirt-sleeves; coat slung over his shoulder, and whip in hand, he is on the way to get his horse and voiture for the day. To be even a cocher in Paris is considered a profession. If he dines at six-thirty and you hail him to take you as he rattles past, he will make his brief apologies to you without slackening his pace, and go on to his plat du jour and bottle of wine at his favorite rendezvous, dedicated to “The Faithful Cocher.” An hour later he emerges, well fed, revives his knee-sprung horse, lights a fresh cigarette, cracks his whip like a package of torpedoes, and goes clattering off in search of a customer.
The shops along the rue Vaugirard are marvels of neatness. The butcher-shop, with its red front, is iron-barred like the lion’s cage in the circus. Inside the cage are some choice specimens of filets, rounds of beef, death-masks of departed calves, cutlets, and chops in paper pantalettes. On each article is placed a brass sign with the current price thereon.
In Paris nothing is wasted. A placard outside the butcher’s announces an “Occasion” consisting of a mule and a donkey, both of guaranteed “première qualité.” And the butcher! A thick-set, powerfully built fellow, with blue-black hair, curly like a bull’s and shining in pomade, with fierce mustache of the same dye, waxed to two formidable points like skewers. Dangling over his white apron, and suspended by a heavy chain about his waist, he carries the long steel spike which sharpens his knives. All this paraphernalia gives him a very fierce appearance, like the executioner in the play; but you will find him a mild, kindly man after all, who takes his absinthe slowly, with a fund of good humor after his day’s work, and his family to Vincennes on Sundays.
The windows, too, of these little shops are studies in decoration. If it happens to be a problem in eggs, cheese, butter, and milk, all these are arranged artistically with fresh grape-leaves between the white rows of milk bottles and under the cheese; often the leaves form a nest for the white eggs (the fresh ones)—the hard-boiled ones are dyed a bright crimson. There are china hearts, too, filled with “Double Cream,” and cream in little brown pots; Roquefort cheese and Camembert, Isijny, and Pont Levéque, and chopped spinach.
