It is the hour to dine, and with this thought uppermost in every one’s mind studio doors are slammed and night-keys tucked in pockets. And arm in arm the poet and the artist swing along to that evening Mecca of good Bohemians—the Boulevard St. Michel.
[ CHAPTER II]
THE BOULEVARD ST. MICHEL
FROM the Place St. Michel, this ever gay and crowded boulevard ascends a long incline, up which the tired horses tug at the traces of the fiacres, and the big double-decked steam trams crawl, until they reach the Luxembourg Gardens,—and so on a level road as far as the Place de l’Observatoire. Within this length lies the life of the “Boul’ Miche.”
Nearly every highway has its popular side, and on the “Boul’ Miche” it is the left one, coming up from the Seine. Here are the cafés, and from 5 P.M. until long past midnight, the life of the Quartier pours by them—students, soldiers, families, poets, artists, sculptors, wives, and sweethearts; bicycle girls, the modern grisette, the shop girl, and the model; fakirs, beggars, and vagrants. Yet the word vagrant is a misnomer in this city, where economy has reached a finesse that is marvelous. That fellow, in filth and rags, shuffling along, his eyes scrutinizing, like a hungry rat, every nook and corner under the café tables on the terrace, carries a stick spiked with a pin. The next instant, he has raked the butt of your discarded cigarette from beneath your feet with the dexterity of a croupier. The butt he adds to the collection in his filthy pocket, and shuffles on to the next café. It will go so far at least toward paying for his absinthe. He is hungry, but it is the absinthe for which he is working. He is a “marchand de mégots”; it is his profession.