Eggs are received in hampers and boxes containing each one thousand eggs, which are so cleverly packed that not one in a thousand ever gets broken. These eggs are sold in mass by the box, though they are all subject to inspection, and at certain times of the year are carefully and individually examined by officials appointed for the purpose. If on being held up to the light an egg is found not to be in good condition, it is condemned, and is then used for industrial purposes, as in connection with the gilding of wood. Eggs that are simply bad are immediately destroyed.
The price of eggs is higher than it otherwise would be in the Paris markets by reason of the competition of English purchasers. Numbers of farmers send their eggs exclusively to London; which, according to statistics prepared some years ago, receives annually from France eggs to the number of 52,000,000.
A great quantity of game is sold in the Paris markets, especially since the year 1867, when for the first time foreign game was admitted. The imports of game are chiefly from Russia, which possesses in abundance partridges of various kinds, ptarmigans, and black game.[{317}]
THE CHAPELLE SAINT DENIS BARRIER.
CHAPTER XLIV.
THE BARRIERS—PARISIAN CRIME.
The Approaches to Paris—The French Railway System—The St. Germain Railway—The Erection of the Barriers—Some of the most famous Barriers—Parisian Crime—Its Special Characteristics.
PASSING along the left bank of the Seine, in the direction of St. Germain, arrested at every step by some historical association or some interesting object of our own time, we at last quit Paris and find ourselves on the highway to the nearest important suburb.
From the aristocratic Faubourg St. Germain to St. Germain itself was, in the days of Mme. de Sévigné, an easy walk or a pleasant drive. After 1837 St. Germain and the faubourg of the same name were separated only by a brief railway journey. On the 24th of August in the year just named, the railway from Paris to St. Germain was first opened, at a time when the miles of railways constructed in England amounted to some two thousand. The year previously a French statesman had visited the railway from Manchester to Liverpool, and, on his return, declared in the Chamber that railways were only toys to amuse idle persons. “People should see the reality,” he added; “for, even if railways proved a genuine success, their development would not be anything like what has been supposed. If I were to be assured that in France five leagues of railway would be made every year, I should consider that a great deal.” A French scientist declared about the same time that the diminution of temperature experienced on entering the tunnels would be such that in the sudden passage from hot to cold, susceptible persons would get inflammation of the lungs, pleurisy, and catarrh.