Sans-Cravate; or, The Messengers; Little Streams

by Paul de Kock

The chevalier went down into the arena, picked up the glove from the midst of the lions, returned to his place, threw the glove in the lady's face, and never spoke to her again. That, too, happened in the good old time. To-day, our ladies do not exact such proofs of affection; with us, gallantry is less savage, and we might even apply to it what someone has said of music: Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.

Close at hand is Rue des Nonaindières, formerly Rue des Nonains d'Hière, because the abbey of the village of Hière still owned several estates on that street. That was the abbey where the use of eggs was not permitted until the fourteenth century; before that time, they were considered too great a delicacy for nuns.

Then there is Rue Saint-Paul, which cannot fail to remind you of the famous mansion erected by Charles V. With its gardens, it occupied all the space between Rue Saint-Antoine and the river, from the city moat to the church of the parish of Saint-Paul. In those days, the houses in which kings dwelt were always flanked by huge towers, and the gardens planted with fruit trees and vines. Rue Beautrellis and Rue de la Cerisaye took their names respectively from a beautiful trellis and from a plantation of cherry trees, both of which were within the confines of the gardens of the Hôtel Saint-Paul. We have become more luxurious than our kings of the olden time, for now no petty banker will have anything but ornamental trees and shrubs in his park; he would blush to have you find a plum tree or an apricot tree there.

On Rue des Trois Pavillons, one's thoughts inevitably turn to the fair Diane de Poitiers, whom Henri II made Duchesse de Valentinois. That street once bore her name, because she lived there; I cannot tell you why they rechristened it, but, for my part, I prefer the name of a pretty woman to Trois Pavillons.

Lastly, there is the Vieille Rue du Temple. Your heart contracts as you recall the assassination of the Duc d'Orléans on that street, one evening in the month of November, 1407, near a small house called the Image de Notre-Dame.

But we have dwelt long enough on the memories evoked by that ancient quarter. Although the Marais has retained down to the present day, in some of its streets, a part of its primitive aspect, it has undergone numerous changes; new, broad, and airy streets and elegant, even coquettish, houses have risen on the sites of the gloomy Gothic structures of our ancestors. As for the people of that quarter, they bear no resemblance whatever to the Parisians who lived in the Marais at the time of which we have been evoking the memory. Morals, customs, manners, everything is changed, and we may well congratulate our contemporaries that it is so; for, as we have seen, duels, murders, and ambuscades are the subjects of most of the legends that have come down to us. We may be less chivalrous, but, while we are no less brave, we are more light-hearted, more amiable, and much less treacherous than our forbears of the good old time.

To-day, the people of the Marais dress almost as well as those of the Chaussée d'Antin; there are no districts in Paris now that are behind the times in respect to fashions, but everybody cannot or does not choose to follow them. A dandy of Rue Saint-Louis may make as fine a show as he of Boulevard des Italiens, especially as there is nothing to prevent their having the same tailor.

We ought to say, however, that there is something more of the patriarchal rigidity of manners to be observed in the Marais than in other quarters of the capital. The people there close their shops a little earlier, and do not sit up quite so late as in the centre of the city; the young women are more submissive in their demeanor toward their parents, the young men do not as yet venture to appear in a salon when they exhale an odor of pipe or cigar. But these shades of difference are very slight, and, doubtless, will very soon blend with the general color.

The two messengers walked arm in arm. Sans-Cravate seemed deep in thought; he did not speak, but looked carefully on all sides, scrutinizing everybody who passed; he even tried to look into the shops; in every woman that he saw he fancied that he recognized Bastringuette, whom he had ceased to love, as he believed, but of whom he constantly thought. That is a very poor way of ceasing to love a person.

Jean Ficelle whistled and sang and smoked, and tried to enliven his comrade. But he barely replied, and often without rhyme or reason, which proved that he was not listening. Jean Ficelle tried frequently to stop him. When they passed a wine shop, he would say: