Jewellers' apprentices, ladies' hair-dressers, journeymen tailors and upholsterers dance, at twenty sous a head, with sempstresses and ladies' maids.
Journeymen shoemakers, cabinet-makers, and workmen of other trades, not very laborious, assemble in guingettes, where they dance French country-dances at three sous a ticket, with grisettes of an inferior order.
Locksmiths, carpenters, and joiners dance at two sous a ticket, with women who constantly frequent the guinguettes, a species of dancing-girls, whom the tavern-keepers hire for the day, as they do the fiddlers.
Water-carriers, porters, and, in general, the Swiss and Auvergnats have their private balls, where they execute the dances peculiar to their country, with fruit-girls, stocking-menders, &c.
The porters of the corn-market form assemblies in their own neighbourhood; but the youngest only go thither, with a few bons vivans, whose profession it would be no easy matter to determine. Bucksome damsels, proof against every thing, keep them in countenance, either in drinking brandy or in fighting, and not unfrequently at the same bal de société, all this goes on at the same time, and, as it were, in unison.
Those among the porters of the corn-market and charcoal carriers, who have a little manners, assemble on holidays, in public-houses of a more decent description, with good, plain-spoken market-women, and nosegay-girls. They drink unmixed liquor, and the conversation is somewhat more than free; but, in public, they get tipsy, and nothing farther!
Masons, paviours in wooden shoes, tipped with iron, and other hard-working men, in short, repair to guingettes, and make the very earth tremble with their heavy, but picturesque capers, forming groups worthy of the pencil of Teniers.
Lastly, one more link completes the chain of this nomenclature of caperers. Beggars, sturdy, or decrepit, dance, as well as their credulous betters: they not only dance, but drink to excess; and their orgies are more noisy, more prolonged, and even more expensive. The mendicant, who was apparently lame in the day, at night lays aside his crutch, and resumes his natural activity; the idle vagabond, who concealed one arm, now produces both; while the wretch whose wound excited both horror and pity, covers for a tune the large blister by which he makes a very comfortable living.
[LETTER LXVI.]
Paris, February 11, 1802.