"'Not bad, not bad,' said he from time to time. At last came the famous phrase, 'You're no better than a melon,' and it served for finale to the torrent of invectives—for the bouquet to the fire-work of coarse words.
"'Very well, indeed!' cried the grave man. 'And why very well?' said I. 'Because,' said he, 'this woman has just rendered homage to the literature which I profess.' 'How?' 'She has nearly spoken Greek. Yes, indeed, monsieur, the language of Homer. She has just honored this bumpkin with the epithet [Footnote 244] which Thersites, in the second book of the Iliad, line 235, applied to the Grecian kings in council.'"
[Footnote 244: The word used by Thersites is [Greek text], plural of [Greek text], soft or ripe, as applied to fruit, and figuratively to inactive or effeminate persons.]
An Unhealthy Suburb.
With any one's experience of the worst parts of the existing cities of Europe, it would be hard for him to realize the condition of the Quartier Montmartre in former days. The terrible description in Victor Hugo's romance gives only one small phase of it. All the results of extreme poverty, vice, negligence, and thorough laziness united to make a scene of squalor and wretchedness without parallel. There was no thought of removing nuisances, and at this day a section of some heaps of the old strata presents as curious a variety of substances as were ever discovered by the great Abbeville explorer himself. Some future professor, descended from Mr. Chaillu's gorilla, finding various evidences of human workmanship so far below the ordinary platform of the human family in A.D. 2500. will set them down as a deposit of the year 10,000 A.C. Many a police-raid was effected on the inhabitants of the Cour des Miracles, of the Rue Temps-Perdu, of that of the Vide Gousset, (pickpocket,) of the Bout-du-Monde, of the Ville-Neuve; many hundreds seized and sent to the Salpetrière (house of correction) or to La Nouvelle France, (Canada,) and yet the wretched little dens in the filthy, ill-smelling lanes would not fail to get new tenants. "Unfeeling nobles, bad government!" say we. At last in the days of Louis XIII. it was announced that any artisan choosing to settle in the quarter might exercise his trade without let or hindrance, or paying duty or incurring expenses incidental to the carrying on of trades in other portions of the city. Makers of articles of household furniture chiefly availed themselves of the privilege; a better class of inhabitants took possession, and the atmosphere improved.
This (northern) quarter of the city has been, from the earliest times, incommoded by the number of streams arising among the northern and eastern hills adjoining the city, (Paris lying in a natural bowl-like cavity,) and endeavoring to find their way under houses and streets to the Seine. Many efforts have been made from time to time, to provide courses for these troublesome rivulets in channels arched over or open to the day; yet so late as 1855 some houses in the Faubourg Montmartre were filled to the ground floor by subterranean inundations; the inhabitants wondering what could bring water into their kitchens and cellars, and they so much above the level of the Seine. At the present time, under the strong volition of the emperor, an effective attempt is being made at the formation of a large subterranean river and its feeders.
Begging A Thriving Business.
Many visitors to the existing exhibition, while exploring and admiring the Place de Carrousel and its surroundings, will scarcely dream of the space between the Tuileries, the Louvre, and the Palais Royal having been once occupied by an hospital for three hundred poor blind men. This at present magnificent quarter was a poor place in the days of St. Louis, and there were the straggling habitations built. Dust-heaps and filth of many kinds distinguished the locality, and in this uninviting spot the three hundred blind endured life from the days of good Saint Louis.
At its first institution, the hospital was a mere night refuge—a retreat where the blind men were sure of a house over their heads and a sort of bed to sleep on after their criailleries all day through the streets. The old charities were seldom complete in themselves. The pious founders did a certain portion of the good work, leaving to the public an opportunity of completing it. Philip the Fair added a dress stamped with the fleur de lys, and the poor blind man thus equipped was on a level with Edie Ochiltree, and so privileged, he "tote jor ne finit de braire," (the whole day he ceased not his braying,) as an old writer coarsely expressed himself.
There was a parallel to this institution in higher quarters, even in literary regions. In the College of Navarre, placed under the highest patronage, the pupils went in the morning through the streets, stretching out the hand, and crying, "Bread, bread for the poor scholars of Madame de Navarre!"