WINNING A WAGER.
The soup had an appetizing odor, and I could not doubt that what appealed so much to one sense must be grateful to another. I told my companion, a young New Yorker, that I thought of tasting it; whereupon he offered to bet me the price of a dinner at the Café Anglais that I durst not obey my thought. I called at once for a plate of the potage, and really found it excellent, twenty times better than much that I have eaten in first-class hotels at home. The effort of my friend to thwart my humor by talking to me of broiled horse, roast cat, boiled parrot, and stewed puppy, had no effect. I finished the soup with satisfaction, and at the dinner which I had won expressed my regret that the Julienne we had there was not so good as the mysterious mixture in the Quartier Mouffetard.
HONESTY OF CHIFFONNIERS.
The chiffonniers are reputed to be extremely honest. As evidence of this, they are very seldom arrested for any violation of law, and, according to the French code, the finder of any article of value is considered guilty of larceny unless he makes some effort to restore the property. In a great and luxurious city like Paris, many such articles must necessarily be lost, and they are very likely to fall into the possession of the rag-pickers. The representatives of this order are constantly discovering objects which they must feel a strong temptation to keep. Still, they do not yield to the temptation, but deposit what they find with the commissioner of police, who gives a receipt, and takes the name and address of the finder. The thing found is carried to the Prefecture, where it is held, with many other articles, for twelve months; and if, during that time, no one claims it, it is returned to the finder on the presentation of the receipt. In no other city can you feel half so certain of regaining what you have mislaid, or left, or dropped in some public place. I have known of watches and pocket-books (with something in them, too) restored, time and again. I have even recovered lost umbrellas, without the least trouble, and have been handed small pieces of money which I had left upon the tables of restaurants, several days after I had dined there.
Every week a list of articles found and deposited at the Prefecture of Police is published in the official journal, some of which, one would imagine, could not be very readily lost. Among the articles the most frequent are bank notes, porte-monnaies, watches, jewelry, rings of keys, lorgnettes, canes, shawls, gloves, &c. But it is somewhat singular to note, as I have noted, in the list, casks of wine, barrels of brandy, sets of false teeth, wigs, baskets of newly-washed linen, petticoats, hats, and even babies, who have been accidentally left in omnibuses, railway cars, or the public parks, by absent-minded nurses or self-absorbed mothers.
The great majority of the rag-pickers are, as would necessarily be inferred, ignorant, and of the humblest origin. Some of them, however, are persons of education, who have fallen from their natural position through defect of their own, or adversity of circumstances.
I recollect a rag-picker—he must have been nearly fifty years of age—who passed nightly along the Grands Boulevards, and who, when not surveying the ground with his lantern, walked erect, and with military precision. I was told that he had been well born, was of an old and influential family, and had served with distinction in the army in Algiers. Cashiered for some irregular conduct, his family disowned him, and he began a course of dissipation, which soon left him without friends, money, or self-respect. He came to this country in the hope of being able to reform; but his habits of intemperance adhered to him, and after numerous disreputable experiences, and after several arrests on charges of stealing, he returned to Paris.
He could get no employment there of the kind he wanted, and after trying divers methods of obtaining a livelihood, he settled down, socially and mentally, into a rag-picker. Oddly enough, in this position he became industrious and moderately abstemious. Two years ago he was accounted one of the most energetic of his tribe, and often earned, with his lantern and his rake, fifty or sixty francs a week, which is much above the average. Having reached the lowest level, he seemed quite satisfied; and they who had talked with him said he never murmured at fortune, and very rarely referred to his antecedents. His health and strength were so well preserved, that he had continued in his grubbing occupation twelve or fifteen years longer than is customary with his class. This appears to be one of the few instances in which as men descend socially they rise morally.
LA BELLE D’ENFER.
Among the trilleuses,—the old women who arrange and assort the contents of the chiffonniers’ baskets for the rag-merchants,—I recall, just before the Franco-German war, one of the ugliest hags it has ever been my fortune to see; and my observation of hags has been extensive, varied, and profound. One of Rembrandt’s ancient females was youthful and beautiful to her, who attracted me, somewhat after an inverted fashion, by her positive hideousness. Seeing her one day in the Cité Doré, I inquired of a gendarme respecting her. He expressed his surprise that I did not recognize her, adding, “Everybody knows her. She is called the Belle of the Bottomless Pit (Belle d’Enfer).” He then gave me her history; and thus it ran:—