THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Lawrence P. Spinparn
 
 THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY 
 
 EDITED BY J. E, 5PINGARN 
 
 IHt 
 
 IfUROPFAN) 
 V LIBRARY/
 
 PLO P LL 
 
 BY 
 
 PIERRE HAMP 
 
 AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY 
 
 JAMLS WHITALL 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 
 1921
 
 COPYRIGHT, IQ2I, BY 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. 
 
 THE QUINN A BOOEN COMPANY 
 RAHWAY. N. J
 
 24 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction. By Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant . . vii 
 
 Author's Preface xiii 
 
 The Fried-Potato Sisters -.3 
 
 Nounou . . ii V" 
 
 The Sweet Smeller 21 t-" 
 
 Monsieur Robled's Throat . . . . . . 29 . 
 
 The Tight-Wads 37 V^ 
 
 A Man with a Soft Job 44 ^ 
 
 Gracieuse 54 
 
 Mademoiselle Sourire 61 , 
 
 The Seine Rises 7* 
 
 At the Express Window 89 
 
 At the Chevalier Restaurant 94 
 
 Fat-Month 104 
 
 The Fly-Catcher in 
 
 A Rich City 119 
 
 " Miller, You're Asleep " 133 
 
 A Labour Demonstration 139 
 
 Boxers 146 
 
 A Bourbon's Pleasures 157 w 
 
 The Joy Boys 170, 
 
 Monsieur Becqueriaux 187 
 
 The King's C's ' . 193 
 
 The Screen 199 
 
 862202
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 ONE of the sketches in this volume, " Fat-Month," con- 
 cerns an oven-man at a Paris pastry-shop. Fat-Month 
 would, I think, have appeared to me with the robust 
 plebeian countenance, the straggling black moustache, 
 the quick brown eye of Pierre Hamp, even if I had 
 not known that the author of " The Labour of Men " 
 was once himself a rjastry cook who, during off hours, 
 read avidly in cheap copies of Victor Hugo by the 
 light of a basement window. " Two things you must al- 
 ways care about: Justice and yer work," says the baker 
 when he is discharged, to " Colossus," his tiny ap- 
 prentice. That, in brief, is Hamp's whole philosophy. 
 And I can see " Colossus," his overwhelming white 
 sleeves tucked up from his grimy hands, gazing with 
 unhappy longing after this friend of the miserable, this 
 thick-set apostle of good work marching off so con- 
 fidently into the future. 
 
 Hamp has indeed arrived at his place in French 
 letters through the kind of material struggle which 
 leaves most men voiceless and without hope. His 
 great strength is that the struggle itself has made him 
 articulate; his great originality, that in his evolution 
 to intellectual power and expressiveness he has never 
 
 vii
 
 viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 renounced his workman's heritage. Years as a pastry 
 cook in France, England and Spain, followed, after a 
 brief period of study, by years as a railway employee, 
 and then by more years as a factory inspector in the 
 textile north this has been the substance of his life. 
 He began to write of labourers s Conrad wrote of 
 seamen; because he felt with them so passionately 
 that he had to make some written record of their lives. 
 His books, though not cast in autobiographic form, 
 have the unmistakable quality of first-hand experience. 
 Hamp is perhaps the only writer in any language who, 
 rising from the " masses," has kept not only the un- 
 sentimental realism and the instinctive sympathies, but 
 the muscles, the tough hide, and so to say the craft 
 technique of the manual worker. 
 
 Zola might have conceived " Fish, Fresh Fish " 
 (" Maree Fraiche "), the history of the lives involved 
 in the conveyance of a fish from the Channel to the 
 Paris restaurant. Anatole France might have written 
 the sketch of the carpenter in " People," who, mending 
 the bookshelf of a dramatic critic, learns with immod- 
 erate surprise and laughter that this gentleman earns 
 his living by sitting in a theatre. But neither Zola, 
 with his naturalism, nor France, with his delicate irony, 
 could have given to the speech and thought of their 
 working-class personages the tang, the poignant verity 
 achieved by Hamp. He knows from having been in- 
 side their skins how the fishmonger, the carpenter,
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 the section-hand, the textile-worker feels, thinks, eats, 
 loves, most significantly how he works works and 
 suffers and rebels from the increasingly machine-made 
 civilization whose weight he carries on his back. The 
 religion of the French craftsman of old was that noth- 
 ing must be done unless it was well done, and Hamp's 
 books are full of an almost lyrical celebration of the 
 " irreplaceable " quality of technique which is being 
 gradually displaced in modern life by automatic 
 \ processes. 
 
 He sees his workmen not at all as Conrad sees his 
 sailors. Not as isolated individuals with romantic or 
 tragic destinies, but always as a part of a complex 
 social and economic system, which exploits them, 
 squeezes them dry. He measures them, as he has 
 had to measure himself, by their producing power, 
 and gauges their human happiness by their good or 
 bad relation to their work. Before the war he sought 
 in vain for happy workmen. During the war he found 
 some. In fact the greatest virtue of the war, as 
 Hamp the Socialist discovered it in "Le Travail In- 
 vincible" (" Labour the Invincible ") that very beau- 
 tiful book which is chiefly a record of his inspections of 
 factories in bombarded areas was to make men love 
 their work again. " Professional probity becomes the 
 perfect form of patriotism." And yet Hamp does not 
 oppose the mechanization of industry. His practical 
 understanding reckons with all the consequences of
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 his country's reluctance to progress, and he tells her 
 in plain terms what he believes to be her duty and 
 her necessity, " Victory by Machinery " (" La Vic- 
 toire Mecanicienne"). 
 
 Like the Belgian Verhaeren, Hamp conceives the 
 modern industrial struggle " into which is poured the 
 strength of men, and from whence comes their inevi- 
 table misery," as a new field for art. " In labour there 
 is great beauty, there is religion, and when we become 
 conscious of it, as the Greeks were conscious of the 
 beauty of the human body, as Virgil understood and 
 loved Nature, our art will be a living force hi our 
 civilization." He sees himself almost prophetically as, 
 one of the forerunners of a new literary technique and 
 takes peculiar pleasure in writing of a trade in its exact 
 trade terms, which are almost Choctaw to the average 
 reader. He sees himself also as a documentarian, and 
 pours out facts and statistics from the crater of his 
 soul like a conglomerate stream of lava. The product 
 is impressionistic; it is sometimes formless, opaque and 
 bewildering, but almost always warm and vital be- 
 cause the heat in the core of the volcano is so intense; 
 and because this writer who despises men of letters 
 and loves his fellow-labourers is, after all, less a scien- 
 tific statistician and social reformer than a poet with 
 a highly personal angle of vision. 
 
 The present volume is not a collection of short 
 stories in the usual American sense, stories with a
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 neat development and a climax. If they stay per- 
 sistently in our minds it is because, like life, they have 
 no real beginning or end and no ready-made solution. 
 " The Fried-Potato Sisters " who took to prostitution 
 from sweated work; " Nounou," the unmarried mother 
 who tried to be a wet-nurse; " The Fly-Catcher," the 
 weak-minded incurable, routed out to vote, claimed 
 and rewarded with a series of drinks by rival factions; 
 " At the Chevalier Restaurant," where the cooks rebel 
 from preparing the daily expensive meal of the pet 
 poodle of a fashionable demi-mondaine these and the ; 
 rest of the sketches are like a series of sharp, reveal- 
 ing pictures thrown on the screen of our ignorance 
 of what goes on behind the polished surfaces of the \ 
 world. 
 
 Who that had always been well fed could realize that 
 a poor child asking for bread was telling the truth be- 
 cause she said, " We ain't got enough to eat."? If she 
 had been lying, says Hamp, she would say, " We ain't 
 got nothing to eat." Hamp's virtue as a social philos- 
 opher is that he makes one know the misery of the 
 unprivileged classes as he made one know the horrors 
 of war, without admitting the possibility of despair. 
 There is nothing in his experience that man cannot 
 endure, and therefore accomplish eventually, in the 
 way of his own liberation. " We have accepted once 
 for all," he wrote me recently, " that our pleasure 
 should be in the struggle. It will be hard. Our gen-
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 eration will not again know tranquillity. But the pleas- 
 ure of trying to make things go better, and the hope 
 that they may be well some day or other, for us or our 
 children, renders everything bearable." There speaks 
 the father of a sizable French family whom one saw 
 in 1917-1919 rising at five and writing until ten, before 
 proceeding to his day's duty of settling disputes be- 
 tween the workmen and the Munitions Ministry. 
 
 ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT.
 
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 THIS book was written and in the publisher's hands 
 before the War, and since then much has happened 
 to the world and to myself. To amuse oneself at the 
 game of writing is a senile occupation; let us try 
 to say the things that must be said, or be silent, 
 though beautiful French, from the phrases of Amyot 
 to the lines of the Ligende des Si&cles, is a source of 
 keen delight to those who love it. 
 
 If a purely literary work has any reason for existing, 
 some excuse might be found in a real devotion to the 
 French language. Without comparing French to the 
 other languages men speak, each one of which has 
 its greatness if it has great poets, but simply taking 
 it as it is, and in its deserved place, it can be written 
 only by those who love it with intensity and complete- 
 ness. Let the writings of those who have loved beau- 
 tiful French be forgiven them, but may contempt be 
 heaped upon those who string words together as a 
 support for their pride, and carelessly turn out books 
 in the hope, of securing a fleeting success and some 
 small profit. They are trying to carve marble with 
 a tool more suited to collecting mud. 
 
 To love the language one writes is not enough, even 
 
 xiii
 
 xiv PREFACE 
 
 for the greatest artist. He must love men; and if, in 
 his pursuit of fine phrases, he visits them with sneer- 
 ing sarcasm, he deserves abuse more bitter than that 
 submitted to by Christ. We read the writings of 
 many nations, but to us they are as sounding brass, 
 if they have sprung from minds that know no human 
 kindness. 
 
 There is agony in peoples' hearts, and they are grop- 
 ing in the blood-splashed darkness of Death. How in- 
 significant seems the game of writing now, with its 
 unreal treatment of things! Intellectual absurdities, 
 prevalent among literary men, are dangerous to a 
 Nation stricken with fear. Whether one dies an 
 Academician or a man of letters, one is no more than 
 a corpse, except that one's body stays at normal tem- 
 perature and shifts from chair to chair in quest of 
 Literature. Out of our great love for France, let us 
 pray for a special epidemic to sweep away busy scribes 
 bending over their desks, and all those who rush to the 
 ink pot every morning to pad out their flimsy ideas 
 with words. What a contemptible trade writing is! 
 The Commercial Code permits the sale of writings, as 
 it does that of unhewn timber, but the literary caste 
 will never admit its commercialism. It claims public 
 esteem for its disinterestedness, and is totally un- 
 worthy of it. Academies are as good as Chambers of 
 Commerce. Literary prizes are as earnestly sought 
 after as bounties for the growing of fine flax, and
 
 PREFACE xv 
 
 those for the exportation of sugar are coveted with 
 equal energy. 
 
 What is a man of letters who is only a man of let- 
 ters? Cardboard and papier mache! A machine for 
 the production of words! And the people of the pen 
 are furious when one calls them word-artists. 
 
 The privilege of being a man of letters is not ob- 
 tained as is that of wearing a robe or carrying a sword. 
 Society has no respect for writers; it considers well- 
 made shoes more necessary than inked paper. To go 
 barefoot is a far greater privation than to live without 
 reading ineptitudes. A writer cannot justify himself 
 on the ground of apostleship, a rare occurrence in the 
 literary trade, but on that of his assistance to the 
 paper and cardboard trades and the bookseller. If 
 publishers are ever able to export pornographic books, 
 the French exchange will be strengthened, and writers 
 who are considered despicable will at least deserve the 
 felicitations of the Foreign Trade Office. 
 
 The existing commercialism of the literary profes- 
 sion is an inevitable consequence of the division of 
 labour. How splendid and sincere would be the litera- 
 ture of a nation whose people wrote only in their leisure 
 moments, and because they felt moved to write! We 
 are all specialists and cannot have two callings. A 
 flax-spinner must spin flax, and though he may possess 
 a fine mind, he cannot let us see into it. A writer has 
 his living to earn by putting black on white, and there
 
 xvi PREFACE 
 
 is no trade more deplorable. If it is stupefying always 
 to do and think the same thing, then belles lettres can 
 dull one's mind as much as selling meat, only one wears 
 cuffs. The commercial end of a writer's activities re- 
 quires more compromising with conscience than is 
 made by a reputable travelling salesman who knows 
 the quality of his goods. The presenting of copies, 
 signed by the author, to all those who can print a good 
 word for it, is the most important step in the process 
 of publishing a book after it is bound, and no time 
 must be lost in doing this. But the flattering of critics 
 does not sell a book. Printed praise of any commodity 
 has its price, and kissing a critic's toes is of no avail 
 without a visit to the cashier of the newspaper. This 
 is the accepted method of procuring publicity. A wine 
 merchant presents knives and calendars to saloon 
 keepers; a dealer in costly soaps publishes the signa- 
 tures of prominent people who use them; and a pub- 
 lisher buys printed praise for his books. 
 
 To find fault with business acumen shows a com- 
 plete misunderstanding of the present state of affairs, 
 but one can still have great respect for the man who 
 cares to write only for his friends, and disdains to sell 
 the record of his thoughts. 
 
 Literary people are not a select group, consecrated 
 to the self-effacing duty of guarding the public mind. 
 Success in literature comes as in politics, or the selling 
 of foodstuffs; only, in the vermicelli trade, you have
 
 PREFACE xvii 
 
 something to offer, and can make good your claims. 
 In the presence of his critics, a writer is like a shame- 
 faced travelling salesman. 
 
 Writers who mix Holy Water or petrol with their 
 ink, to suit the rage of the moment, prove themselves 
 out of pace with the times. And now, when people 
 are hoping to be saved by Labour, Art has scarcely 
 begun to reflect it. Worshippers of Beauty, Mysti- 
 cism, and Militarism have sung their songs of Love, 
 of Religion, and of War. Who will sing to-day of the 
 splendours of Labour to the nations of Industry, and 
 of the contest for wealth, into which is poured the 
 strength of men, and from whence comes their inev- 
 itable misery? 
 
 If there are curses, let them be set before us in 
 flaming letters! If it be a song of triumph, then let 
 the world echo with new hope. 
 
 What value have our miserable little books, setting 
 forth the diversions of this man and that woman, in a 
 world that knows not its destiny, beside the radiant 
 love of the Shulamite or of Chloe, two thousand years 
 older than the stars that once shone down upon them? 
 
 If we are unworthy, and deserving of contemptuous 
 mockery, may our pride be dragged in the dust; but 
 if there be praise for our efforts and pity for our suf- 
 fering, speak to us, O thoughtful and mighty Poets! 
 In you there is the gentleness of Virgins and the fury 
 of Prophets, speak, Mankind is listening.
 
 xviii PREFACE 
 
 Men have become the prey of poison and fire, can- 
 non and sword, but thy genius, O France, utters no 
 words of pity for their misfortunes or denunciation of 
 the crime. 
 
 The nation puts forth heroic efforts, but behind 
 them is suffering as deep as the deepest ocean, and 
 there is no one to measure it, or to listen to a sob 
 that might echo through millions of years. 
 
 People are worn out with laughter and weeping, yet 
 they cannot endure silence, and ineptitudes still flow 
 from loathsome pens. 
 
 But will the noblest thoughts change human nature? 
 After centuries of writing, men, and Gods too, ser- 
 monizing from the tops of mountains, have failed to 
 make human beings less fond of tearing each other to 
 pieces with artillery, and of living through the disasters 
 arranged by their scientists. 
 
 Will man emerge from the fury of the storm with 
 discouragement written upon his brow? No. He will 
 be hopeful to the day of his death. We always covet 
 the impossible; but there is one joy left to us, and that 
 is the knowledge that men are waiting. For millions 
 of years they have been waiting for Peace. War has 
 now burst over them with a violence surpassing that 
 of the mightiest volcanic eruption. Humanity is lis- 
 tening for a voice to console her for being what she is, 
 and to strengthen her hope for better things. She is 
 not disheartened.
 
 PREFACE xix 
 
 The dawn of this new epoch in the world's history 
 was red with the blood of men, and the art of a mur- 
 dered nation must be sublime or it cannot exist. A 
 field, wider than any that men have ever dealt with, 
 greater than War, richer than Beauty, and nobler than 
 Love, now offers itself to the artist: Labour. Never, 
 since man has lived by the sweat of his brow, has the 
 toil that nourishes a love-making, war-waging world 
 been reflected in human poetry. 
 
 The greatest poet of Labour was Jehovah, who stood 
 in the Garden of Eden, and called down eternal male- 
 dictions upon the work of men's hands. 
 
 Torrents of suffering rush down upon us to-day, car- 
 rying men off to their mysterious fate, but no hopeful 
 voice calls to us out of the future. Minds keep silent 
 watch, while the valiant nation sets a superb example 
 of human force. 
 
 Out of such splendid effort, such cruel suffering, and 
 such hopefulness, why do not thoughtful intellects 
 arise, whose ringing words will create new forms? 
 
 Come, Poet. The world awaits you. 
 
 PIERRE HAMP.
 
 PEOPLE
 
 THE FRIED-POTATO SISTERS 
 
 MARTHA RONDEFRITE was fifteen years old, and she 
 worked at home. She wanted as many working hours 
 as possible, so she did hardly any cooking, and bought 
 things from the pork-butcher. Two sous' worth of 
 fried potatoes for each person were always ordered, 
 according to the family custom. Sometimes her 
 eighteen-year-old sister Georgette got these on her 
 way home in the evening, from their favourite frying- 
 cook's stall, sandwiched in next to the wine-shop. 
 Their unfailing answer to the neighbours' question: 
 " Hello, Martha, where are you off to? " 
 " To get two sous' worth of fried potatoes." 
 "How goes it, Georgette; where are you comin' 
 from? " 
 
 " From gettin' two sous' worth of fried potatoes," 
 stuck to them after a time, and people called them 
 the Little Rondefrites.* 
 
 Mme. Rondefrite sold vegetables and fruit on a bar- 
 row, by virtue of Municipal Permit No. 727 ob- 
 tained on the death of her man, Jules Dame, cab- 
 driver, who used to say: " You can live on two sous' 
 worth of fried potatoes." To that, however, he had 
 
 * Rond de f rites, a penny portion of fried potatoes. 
 
 3
 
 4 PEOPLE 
 
 always added three absinths, and some half-pints of 
 wine: white before dinner, and red in the eve- 
 ning. 
 
 They lived in the rue de Belleville, on the sixth 
 floor of a house with a wagon entrance leading to a 
 shed, where Mme. Rondefrite kept her barrow. On 
 Sundays she took her daughters for a walk, and, being 
 a decent woman, she roundly abused any man who 
 tried to slip her his card. 
 
 The girls had to get paying work when they were 
 young, and they did artificial flowers, bead wreaths, 
 ready-made clothing, shoe button-holes, and feather- 
 curling, one after the other, in the busy season of each 
 trade. The result of this was that they were fairly 
 good in most lines, but experienced workers in 
 none. 
 
 Later on, Georgette took it into her head to spe- 
 cialize, and she became a mounter of artificial flowers 
 at a work-room in the rue Saint-Denis. In that trade, 
 when there are new models to duplicate, the fore- 
 woman generally chooses the nimblest hands for the 
 job, in other words, the champions. In the case of 
 women who work at home, the making-up price is 
 determined by the time required. Three sous is paid 
 for making a spray of Burgundy roses, in half an 
 hour. Hence the normal rate: six sous an hour. The 
 champion starts off at a killing pace, to please the 
 forewoman, but after the first hour she is done for.
 
 THE FRIED-POTATO SISTERS 5 
 
 'This hustling fixes the rate of pay. A piece-worker, 
 working twelve hours a day, takes an hour to make 
 one of these three-sou sprays of roses. 
 
 The forewoman made Georgette Rondefrite enter 
 the lists, for her fingers were very nimble; and she 
 stood in with the other girls, because she didn't preju- 
 dice the forewoman against them. 
 
 One day a girl, out of work, came to the work-room, 
 grumbling about her rent and her sick husband, and 
 offered herself at ten sous less a day for the work 
 Georgette was doing. She was engaged, and worked 
 hard in order to show her gratitude to the forewoman. 
 Thus the hourly pay was brought down to four sous, 
 and she was nicknamed Vermin. 
 
 That evening Georgette was all ready to let her 
 have it from the shoulder. Vermin took on airs and 
 swept past her, but the rest began to hoot, and she 
 burst into tears. 
 
 "I'll dry your tears for you! " cried Georgette. 
 " Couldn't you have landed a job without cutting 
 down the money like that? Why didn't you say so, 
 if you were in trouble? We could have fixed that up 
 for you." Then she finished by slapping her in the 
 face, but she didn't come to work next morning, for, 
 on the way from the rue Saint-Denis to Belleville, she 
 found the means of spending a little while without 
 working, in the person of M. Lepiqueur, forty years 
 old, and a wholesale dealer in sponges. Twice a week
 
 6 PEOPLE 
 
 she helped him to enjoy life, and he helped her to 
 exist. 
 
 She kept on doing flowers and, when the need be- 
 came urgent, men. A well-to-do bachelor, whom she 
 met on the same corner, cut out M. Lepiqueur, and 
 offered her a set of furniture worth four hundred and 
 eighty francs, including a wardrobe with a mirror 
 set in the door; and he rented her a room in the 
 rue des Petites-Ecuries at twenty-five francs a 
 month. 
 
 "There's plenty of girls of your age would be 
 mighty glad to have as nice a layout," said Mme. 
 Rondefrite, " but I don't approve of it! When I 
 started housekeeping with your father, I wasn't 
 thinkin' only of pleasure. If I was to box your ears 
 I couldn't keep you at home. It's time you were mak- 
 ing out for yourself, but it wrings my heart just the 
 same." 
 
 Martha's disapproval of Georgette's irregular inter- 
 course was marked by much more rudeness, and her 
 insults were very bitter, for she was jealous of her 
 well-dressed sister. 
 
 Georgette, without any ill-feeling, contributed 
 twenty-five francs a month towards her own lunch; 
 she declared that the fried potatoes to be had in the 
 rue Saint-Denis had no taste at all compared with 
 those at Belleville, and one Saturday night she brought 
 one of her friends along to appreciate them. Martha
 
 THE FRIED-POTATO SISTERS 7 
 
 was working at some garments in ticking, forty sous 
 a day, and she had a very cold welcome for her 
 sister's friend, who was equally well-dressed. 
 " So you kick up your heels too, do you? " 
 "No. I've got a friend. I used to do flowers in 
 the summer and feathers in the winter, and it brought 
 me fifty francs a month. Fifteen to mama for my 
 lunch; fifteen to the milkman for morning and eve- 
 ning; twelve for my room; and that left me eight to 
 dress myself, and to spend on Sundays. It's no fun 
 to see your friends go off to the country, when you've 
 got to stay in town and wander about like a lost dog. 
 I can't get %long without some kind of fun. If I 
 couldn't go boating in summer and to the theatre in 
 winter, I'd die of boredom! With wages like that, 
 you've got to have a man, if you want any peace at all. 
 I've found one who gives me clothes and pays my rent. 
 So much the better for me." 
 
 A fluttering of wings took Georgette to the window, 
 where she found the canary in terror at some cater- 
 wauling on the next roof. She brought the cage into 
 the room, and covered it with a cloth, whispering kisses 
 to the poor little thing. Then she made room at the 
 window for her friend, and they gazed down at the 
 street below them. Upon the walls there were bril- 
 liant squares of light, cast across from the windows 
 opposite, through which passed rapid silhouettes of 
 the people on the pavements; now and then they could
 
 8 PEOPLE 
 
 see the slow-moving outline of a woman of the streets 
 in search of business. 
 
 Fruit and vegetables were being offered at reduced 
 prices from the barrows, and these cries came up to 
 the sixth floor, as though distilled from the confused 
 murmur of the street. On each barrow a candle could 
 be seen burning steadily, sheltered from the wind by 
 a half-circle of stiff paper. The shops all had their 
 shutters up, and the bars blazed forth like the mouths 
 of great furnaces with their groups of stokers. 
 
 Each of the windows in the opposite wall framed a 
 picture of people with elbows on the sill; behind them, 
 sitting at tables, tired women were hurrying to finish 
 the day's sewing. Circles, tinted according to the 
 colour of the lamp-shades, were thrown upon the ceil- 
 ings, and showers of bright light fell upon the fore- 
 heads of men, desperately calculating how to pay for 
 their eating, sleeping, and loving. 
 
 Above the roofs of the houses all was peaceful, and 
 the strokes of a clock fell upon the stillness, like pearls 
 dropping from a broken necklace. 
 
 After dinner, Mme. Rondefrite carried some sew- 
 ing she had finished back to the rue Reaumur, with a 
 friend who had come to help her. 
 
 " Take it easy," said Georgette, " they're open till 
 ten on Saturdays." 
 
 Martha crossed her knees beneath the piece of tick- 
 ing she was sewing; Georgette was playing with two
 
 THE FRIED-POTATO SISTERS 9 
 
 spools on the table, and when she stretched out her 
 arms to pick them up, you could see a gold bracelet 
 on her left wrist. 
 
 " It's just like the work-room here. Always some- 
 one scowling," she declared. 
 
 Martha burst out scornfully, "Oh, your work- 
 room! " 
 
 She stopped her sewing to look at the bracelet, and 
 began to pick the dust out of the cracks in the table 
 with her needle. Georgette laughed, showing all her 
 well-polished teeth, and Martha threw the ticking in 
 her face. 
 
 The stuff unrolled and dragged the lamp from the 
 table to the floor, where it broke, fortunately after 
 it had gone out. The girls didn't scream, but when 
 they had gotten their breath back, they were in oppo- 
 site corners of the dark room, now filled with petro- 
 leum fumes. Georgette, standing tiptoe in her twenty- 
 five-franc shoes, held a lighted candle as high as her 
 arm would reach, and they could see the soaked ticking 
 and the broken lamp. 
 
 " That's a good day's work! You'll have to pay for 
 the ticking, and buy another lamp." 
 
 Martha wept bitterly at the thought of this crushing 
 responsibility, and then, snuffling up her tears, she 
 wailed, " I'm going to drown myself ... in the 
 canal . . . it's nearer than the Seine and not so many 
 people. You won't see me any more! I've got enough
 
 ia PEOPLE 
 
 of this. . . . You always have a good time . . . 
 go to dances . . . people give you jewellery. And I 
 sit here all day long sewing waistcoats! I won't stand 
 it any longer. . . . I'll kill myself. ..." 
 
 She ran to the window, but Georgette was just as 
 nimble and stronger. She got the better of her and 
 then coaxed, " Stop crying; they'll like you as well as 
 me. Wait a jiffy." 
 
 The bracelet was slipped on Martha's wrist, and she 
 held it up to the light, while Georgette did up her 
 hair, and changed combs with her. 
 
 Their mother, weary with climbing six flights, was 
 just outside the door, and as she entered, Georgette 
 cut short her astonishment at the smell of petroleum: 
 " I upset the lamp, but I'll get a prettier one. . . . 
 I'm going to take Martha along with me to dance 
 to-night. She never goes out." 
 
 And Mme. Rondefrite didn't struggle against Fate.
 
 NOUNOU * 
 
 M. SAUVESTRE, Mayor of Chaufours, a commune of 
 plaster-burners, knocked the mud from his big shoes 
 at the entrance of the Town Hall, and slowly ascended 
 the steps to his office. On its whitened walls, four 
 French flags, which had been bought at the Galeries 
 Amienoises, radiated out from behind the pale bust of 
 the Republic. 
 
 M. Jules Marnier, a teacher in one of the ele- 
 mentary schools, who was the Mayor's deputy, sat at 
 a pine table wo/king at the office accounts. 
 
 M. Sauvestre knocked out the contents of his pipe 
 at the edge of the table: 
 
 " Anything new from that Leloup girl? " 
 
 M. Marnier supplied the required details: 
 
 " She gave birth to a daughter, father unknown, at 
 the Amiens Hospital where we put her. She's coming 
 back with it to-morrow." 
 
 " For God's sake, let her stay where she is! We've 
 got enough responsibility now with her paralysed 
 mother, let alone her and her bastard. It's impossible! 
 She'll have to take a place somewhere." 
 
 The next day the Mayor paid a visit to old Mme. 
 
 * Nounou, nurse. 
 
 II
 
 12 PEOPLE 
 
 Leloup's hovel at the edge of the fields. She was 
 paralysed on one side, and she lived upon crusts that 
 people gave her, and vegetables stolen with her left 
 arm. Her daughter, Celestine, sat on a three-legged 
 stool, smiling at her infant while she fed it. Only 
 half-satisfied, it was vigorously chewing at her abun- 
 dant breast, and the pain caused her to wink her eyes 
 every now and then, but there was physical pleasure 
 in it. 
 
 " You'll have to go away again. There's no chance 
 here for you to earn the money to keep your mother, 
 and that little mite too. You've got milk, so you'd 
 better go to Paris and be a wet-nurse. Our midwife 
 here knows the employment agencies. You'll be happy 
 if you can help your mother, who has to beg for her 
 living." 
 
 The old woman lifted her untidy head: 
 
 " If me old man hadn't died at the kilns, I wouldn't 
 be needin' anybody's help." 
 
 " You ought to have looked after your girl; why, she 
 doesn't even know where she got the brat." 
 
 "Sure I does. It's little Firmin, the lime-burner, 
 who's a soldier at Arras now. There wasn't nobody 
 else." She looked at her baby and began to cry. " I 
 ain't got no money to go to Paris! " 
 
 " Don't worry about that. We'll give you a start, 
 and you can pay it back out of your first month's 
 wages."
 
 NOUNOU 13 
 
 So she set forth with her offspring, and a layette, 
 which the Relief Board gave her. 
 
 The Widow Brousse, who kept a Registry Office, 
 was well recommended by the midwives of the Somme 
 district, and she met Celestine at the Gare du Nord, 
 in order to take her to her establishment in the rue 
 Censier. It comprised a reception room for clients, 
 with windows on the street, and a large room with 
 two windows, behind the court, forthe nurses. There 
 were ten beds around the walls, and ten of them could 
 sleep in coolness and comfort, or twenty, two in a bed. 
 A circular railing guarded the stove, and attached to it 
 by means of rings were the heads of ten cradles where 
 ten babies could be put, or twenty, foot to foot, or 
 side by side, or arranged in any other way that would 
 best utilize the heat. The stove was lit at one o'clock 
 in the afternoon, and again at one in the morning. 
 
 The nurses had to pay ten sous a day for their 
 lodging, and thirty for their food. Celestine didn't 
 want to spend thirty sous a day for two meals, so she 
 arranged her own, and they were mostly bread and 
 cheese. Sometimes her comrades took her to a char- 
 itable society, where beef and lentils were to be had 
 by poor women who were nursing their babies. 
 
 The women who had had their babies in Paris knew 
 all the places where one could obtain food, and were 
 up to all the dodges for getting help from the Relief 
 Board. Some of them went out on Sunday afternoons,
 
 14 PEOPLE 
 
 thereby losing the opportunity of being interviewed at 
 the office and getting placed, but the street offered 
 excellent chances to earn the money to keep going 
 until the following Sunday. 
 
 They all envied Celestine Leloup for her fresh com- 
 plexion. 
 
 "I'd be a rich woman if I had a head like you," 
 said one of them. 
 
 During the week, while they waited drearily for the 
 arrival of possible clients, the women played cards 
 near the cradles, or retailed their troubles, or plagued 
 Anne-Marie Anic, a bad-smelling Breton, who only 
 knew three French words: " Hou la la! " Every eve- 
 ning she wept into her great yellow handkerchief, 
 stained with tobacco-snuff. 
 
 The Widow Brousse welcomed the visitors with a 
 slight inclination of her shiny forehead, with its bang 
 of black oily hair, and made her customary remarks 
 about the slimy courtyard and the two sick-looking 
 trees: 
 
 "The nurses have good fresh air here; they can 
 take their babies out there into the garden." 
 
 They had to cross it in all weathers, shielding, as 
 best they could, these infants who had to be shown 
 naked to fussy clients, in order to prove that they 
 were healthy. 
 
 After others had proved unsatisfactory, Anne-Marie 
 Anic, Celestine Leloup, and a Parisian who had at
 
 NOUNOU 15 
 
 one time been syphilitic, presented themselves for the 
 consideration of twenty-five-year-old Mme. Barbieux, 
 who was wearing a hat with an enormous array of 
 feathers on it. 
 
 " Oh, le le, what a hat! " muttered the Parisian. 
 
 " Hou la la! " repeated Anne-Marie Anic. 
 
 A dumpy little midwife accompanied Mme. Bar- 
 bieux. She asked the ages of the babies, and mauled 
 them about so much that they started to yell. Mme. 
 Barbieux drew away from Anne-Marie Anic: 
 
 " Good gracious! How dreadfully she smells! " 
 
 The midwife was very much taken by the fine, blue- 
 veined skin and white breasts of the Parisian, but 
 I Mme. Barbieux was more attracted by^Celestine's air 
 I of youthful innocence. She had wanted an unmarried 
 "mother, who could be had for less money, and who 
 would be unlikely to come to her in the middle of her 
 time, saying that unless she had higher wages she 
 would have to go back to her husband who needed 
 her. No one would disturb this girl. 
 
 The midwife verified the condition of her teeth, and 
 I tested her milk on a piece of white paper, and Celes- 
 \ tine, crying over her sleeping infant, was finally 
 \ engaged. 
 
 " The little one will be well taken care of," the 
 Widow Brousse assured her, " you'll only have to pay 
 twenty sous a day, and the woman will come day after 
 to-morrow. If you go on like thiSj your milk will
 
 16 PEOPLE 
 
 stop. And if that happens, don't forget that I can 
 place you as a dry-nurse." 
 
 In the carriage, Mme. Barbieux comforted this 
 broken-hearted little mother, whose milk now belonged 
 to M. Leon Barbieux. The bottle didn't suit him, and 
 he yelled from morning till night. But as soon as he 
 was placed at Celestine's full breast, he became silent, 
 and the end of his meal came only because he had 
 fallen asleep. 
 
 Mme. Piau, from Margon (Sarthe), came two days 
 later to get Marie Leloup from the Widow Brousse, 
 and she paid Celestine a visit in Mme. Barbieux's 
 kitchen. Seated beneath a row of polished casseroles, 
 with a glass of warm wine beside her, she put her big- 
 veined hands on her knees, turned her placid face, 
 with its two piercing eyes, upon Celestine, and began 
 to speak slowly: 
 
 " Babies . . . it's always babies. We knows a 
 thing or two about 'em. . . . There ain't no better 
 place than the Sarthe. I never had one die on me. 
 That Ruau woman, who works in the fields, buried 
 one last year; and the same thing with that Malhoure 
 girl. With me, never! The air's grand at my place." 
 
 "You're going to give mine yer own milk, ain't 
 ye? " asked Celestine. 
 
 " I've got enough milk for two! If I didn't I'd put 
 mine on the bottle. Not yours. You can be easy 
 about yer little one. I know my business, all right."
 
 NOUNOU 17 
 
 "Of course," joined in Mme. Barbieux, who had 
 entered the kitchen. " I can see that Mme. Piau is 
 capable of taking good care of your little girl. You 
 needn't be anxious at all. The important thing is not 
 to get yourself worked up over it." 
 
 Celestine had to pay Mme. Piau for the first month 
 in advance: thirty francs; then there were fifteen 
 francs travelling expenses, and an office fee of five 
 francs, making in all fifty francs ten centimes, with 
 the stamp. Mme. Barbieux gave her one month's 
 money in advance: sixty francs. And Mme. Barbieux 
 had also to pay the Widow Brousse a fee of seventy 
 francs for getting Celestine for her, and an office 
 charge of five francs as well. Also, the Widow 
 Brousse charged Mme. Piau twenty francs for getting 
 her the job of looking after Marie Leloup. Thus she 
 cleared a hundred francs for her trouble in behalf of 
 Celestine and Marie Leloup, mother and daughter. 
 
 Mme. Barbieux provided Celestine with clean linen 
 and a cap with red ribbons, and allowed her an un- 
 limited supply of expensive food. All she had to do 
 was to push M. Leon in his white coach, to change 
 him, and every two and a half hours to place the 
 softened point of one of her breasts between his 
 lips. 
 
 She sent what money she had left to her mother, 
 and was filled with pride at seeing her charge do so 
 well. In fact she found life extremely pleasant. She
 
 i8 PEOPLE 
 
 adored undressing him, while he kicked about on her 
 lap, and she understood perfectly when he said, " Aee. 
 Aee. Que-que," that he enjoyed wiggling his little 
 bent legs: 
 
 " Come into the world sittin', didn't ye, my lazy 
 little pet? " 
 
 "Ae. Ae." 
 
 " Look, Madame, he follows me like a light." She 
 went to the other end of the room, and the child's 
 eyes never left her. 
 
 " Me too," cajoled Mme. Barbieux, " Loulou, 
 Cutie! " M. Leon began to cry, because he couldn't 
 see Nounou, who was standing behind her mistress. 
 
 " Nounou, take him quickly and stop his crying; it's 
 easy to see you don't love him," said Mme. Barbieux 
 angrily. And Nounou laughed and laughed; then she 
 began to think: 
 
 " And my own little Marie, she don't know no one 
 but her nurse." Then she asked: "She's fed at the 
 breast, ain't she, Madame? " 
 
 "Certainly, Nounou! " But an anonymous letter 
 came, saying: "... your child, whom you left with 
 the Piau woman, won't live long. She's beating it 
 until the blood comes! " 
 
 Mistress and nurse wept together. 
 
 "How can people be so wicked! " moaned Mme. 
 Barbieux. "If you worry yourself now, Leon will 
 have colic. ." 
 
 '
 
 NOUNOU 19 
 
 M. Barbieux wrote to the Mayor of Marion, and 
 the reply was: 
 
 " The Leloup child is doing well. ..." 
 
 All Nounou's letters were intercepted, but one day 
 when she was pushing M. Leon in his coach, a woman, 
 who was hurrying past, put a note into her hand: 
 " My sister is going to Paris, and this is a good chance 
 to tell you that your little girl is at death's door. That 
 Piau woman ..." 
 
 Celestine ate nothing that evening, and M. and 
 Mme. Barbieux were beside themselves: 
 
 "But your milk will surely stop! " And that is 
 what happened. "My poor Leon! A change of 
 1^ nurses. And he was doing so well with this one! " 
 
 Mme. Barbieux put on her big feathered hat, and 
 hurried around to the Widow Brousse, who let her 
 have the Parisian, and said to Celestine when she 
 returned: 
 
 " You are a queer one! The girl who's taking your 
 place won't lose her milk through worrying over her 
 baby. I won't get the chance to send a third to that 
 lady. Don't fret yourself; I'll get you a place as dry- 
 nurse." 
 
 But a week later she told her: 
 
 " You're too young. You've never brought up an 
 infant, and people won't trust you, and I can't keep 
 you here any longer. Next week you'll have to send 
 thirty francs to Margon; when the money doesn't
 
 20 PEOPLE 
 
 come promptly, those Sarthe people take babies to 
 the Relief Board. . . . ! Don't cry like that; things 
 always come out all right in this life. I'm going to 
 place you as maid-of-all-work. I know of a big house 
 where they're looking for one. You've got a pretty 
 face, and they like that. You'll get tips as big as you 
 are yourself." 
 
 The following day the Widow Brousse proposed 
 Celestine to M. Marius Bissac, a wholesale merchant, 
 according to his visiting card. He was a big, red- 
 faced, smooth-shaven man, benevolent in appearance 
 and deliberate in movement and speech. He gave the 
 Widow Brousse a hundred francs. 
 
 " All right. Come along," he said. 
 
 And Celestine set forth for the brothel.
 
 THE SWEET SMELLER 
 
 IN 1870, Eugene Cauchoit, nicknamed the Sweet 
 Smeller, was living in the rue des Couronnes, in a 
 house that contained sixty-three families. He was a 
 leather-dresser and the smell of his working clothes, 
 no worse, perhaps, than that of the staircase he 
 climbed so often, had brought him this worthy desig- 
 nation. He wasn't at all a bad sort. 
 
 During the Siege, the Sweet Smeller had no job, and 
 began by being delighted to earn thirty sous a day in 
 the national guard, but he soon became obsessed by 
 the fear of stopping a bullet by the wall of Pere- 
 Lachaise. Old Moreau, one of his neighbours, was 
 also in the national guard, and he had no job either, 
 for his trade was cleaning out cesspools, and, as he 
 said, " Those places don't fill up very fast, while the 
 siege is on." 
 
 Out of those sixty-three families who lived in the 
 house in the rue des Couronnes, only three people 
 escaped the bullets of the Versailles people: two old 
 women who were wounded, and Eugene Jr., the Sweet 
 Smeller's youngest child. 
 
 The sombre glory of the riot mounted guard, gnaw- 
 ing its fists over the heroes slaughtered for the God 
 of their kind: Revolution. 
 
 21
 
 22 PEOPLE 
 
 Life resumed its usual pace again, and when our 
 martyr's destitute son was asked by his cronies to 
 spend a sou, he always said, " But I haven't a 
 pelaudl " * So he came to be called Pelaud in the 
 neighbourhood where he passed his dreary childhood. 
 His only pleasure was to scream, " To heM with the 
 police! " And never did enthusiasm for a new religion 
 take such complete possession of the minds of its 
 devotees as did hatred of the police that of this little 
 savage. But he never got into any trouble, and with 
 the help of some neighbours later on he set up as a 
 lamp-maker: hand-lamps and carriage-lamps. And he 
 earned from forty to fifty francs a week when he 
 worked reasonably hard. 
 
 About this time he met Jeanne Depuis, who earned 
 five francs a day at home, making sugar-candy angels 
 for confectioners. Once Pelaud cut his hand working 
 at his lamps, and Jeanne bound it up for him, while 
 he admired the army of angels hanging from a piece 
 of twisted brass wire. The little candy figures trem- 
 bled and shook with the nervous skipping about of 
 Simone, Jeanne's daughter by her first lover. He had 
 been locked up some years before; not enough money, 
 and too much flourishing of knives. He imagined him- 
 self an anarchist and his motto was: " Live by spong- 
 ing, and die without giving a damn! " 
 
 When his cut had been attended to, gratitude moved 
 
 * Pelaud, slang for "SOIL"
 
 THE SWEET SMELLER 23 
 
 the lamp-maker to send the little girl out for a litre 
 of white wine, and while she was gone Jeanne Depuis 
 became Mme. Pelaud. Their illegitimate union was 
 abundantly blessed, the babies were brought into the 
 world with rapidity and improvidence. Simone was 
 now old enough to look after them, while her mother 
 kept on working with her gum-dragon paste and sugar- 
 candy. 
 
 The sixth little Pelaud died unwillingly for Re- 
 ligion, as his grandfather, the Sweet Smeller, had 
 done for the Revolution. When he was eight days 
 old he was taken to be baptized, for at Sacre-Cceur 
 twenty francs could be obtained by mothers who came 
 promptly to this damp ceremony. 
 
 Mme. Pelaud, being terribly hard up, accomplished 
 a quick recovery in order to avail herself of this wind- 
 fall. But, in the street, a malicious north wind pierced 
 the infant's scanty wrappings, and the priest, muffled 
 to the eyes against the icy atmosphere of the church, 
 finished him off by pouring a little too much cold water 
 over his head, in the name of the Father, Son, and 
 Holy Ghost. So the twenty francs had to pay for his 
 funeral, but he was buried a Christian. 
 
 Death loves to retrace its steps; simple-minded 
 people say, " It never rains but it pours." And the 
 truth of these threadbare words was borne out, for 
 Pelaud became consumptive. The doctor said, " Live 
 in the country; eat raw meat, and more of every-
 
 24 PEOPLE 
 
 thing. Breathe plenty of good air. Good-after- 
 noon." 
 
 Pelaud took as much of this good advice as his 
 means would permit. He went for walks in the eve- 
 ning, after eating his share of meat, and also his wife's, 
 she had discovered the advantages of vegetarianism. 
 In spite of this, he found himself unable to do a 
 full day's work, lost his position, and had to make out 
 with odd jobs. But these didn't last more than a few 
 hours, because the moment he was discovered to be 
 too ill to do good work he was told to go. 
 
 At the end of three successive quarters, they had to 
 move, because there was no money for the rent. 
 Pelaud became irritable beyond endurance. The 
 chairs got wobbly, and the cupboard, which no 
 longer contained the pile of crusts, parted company 
 with its doors, owing to the repeated visits of the chil- 
 dren, who always expected to find something there. 
 The doors always came down on their heads with a 
 bang, but they were so hungry that they didn't feel it. 
 
 Then came a period of six months in the garret of 
 one of a group of houses containing three hundred 
 and eighteen other tenants, in the Combat quarter, 
 where their rent was paid by a charitable society com- 
 posed of benevolent ladies in silks and satins. The 
 children spent hours looking down through the deep 
 gully between the houses at the people coming out of 
 the work-rooms to climb the steep ascent. When a
 
 THE SWEET SMELLER 25 
 
 wagon passed up the street, it sounded like the roll of 
 a distant drum. Busses, as full as ambulance wagons 
 after a defeat, cut their way through the swarming 
 humanity. 
 
 The crowd thickened at the steepest places, and 
 there was as much elbowing and jostling in the middle 
 of the street as on the pavement. When the time 
 came for the streetwalkers to take up their positions, 
 ! it was easy to distinguish these women by the clean 
 aprons they wore, showing no sign of wear, except that 
 the pockets were pulled out of shape by the weight 
 of idle hands, the Pelaud children went down, and, 1 
 out into the street, where they followed four municipal 
 guards in tufted shakos, bound for the theatre to per- 
 form their nightly duties. Then they stood in front 
 of a butcher shop, blazing with light, and feasted their 
 eyes upon a frieze of shining hooks, supporting dead 
 sheep with green leaves wired to their tails. 
 
 The third little Pelaud revealed artistic tendencies 
 by drawing pictures of his family on the staircase 
 walls, with a piece of charcoal stolen from the shop 
 where Wines and Coal were sold. The doorkeeper 
 expostulated, saying it wouldn't have been so bad if 
 'only one corner had been spoiled. But what was he 
 to do? The family was such a big one! As it was, 
 he had to huddle his figures together so as not to 
 leave anyone out, and, since they all looked alike, he 
 wrote a name on each stomach.
 
 26 PEOPLE 
 
 hThey got notice to clear out, as was to be expected, 
 d no other garret was to be found. An exhausted 
 ,,oman, a dying man, and six kids! The janitors all 
 said in self-defence, " Put yourselves in the proprietor's 
 place." And since no proprietor troubled to put himself 
 in their place, the Pelaud furniture was put out into the 
 court at the end of the quarter. But when this fact was 
 discovered by the three hundred and eighteen other 
 tenants, they screamed their indignation from the win- 
 dows, and M. Balance, the representative of the Cor- 
 poration that owned the property, found a solution for 
 the difficulty. 
 
 His wine-cellars were getting mouldy, they were 
 never used, because his tenants went to the seventy- 
 five retail dealers in the neighbourhood for their liquor. 
 Six francs a month bought the Pelauds the right to 
 live " in a cool place " like so many rich man's wine 
 casks. But there were serious drawbacks; the bud- 
 ding artist had no staircase wall upon which to exer- 
 cise his talent, and the others were deprived of the 
 thrilling occupation of gazing down into the street 
 from the sixth floor. They could only look at the pass- 
 ing feet, through the little ventilating holes along the 
 edge of the pavement. The young artist considered 
 that this descent beneath the earth was a punishment 
 administered by God, for he had questioned the priest 
 at catechism: " God is everywhere: in Heaven, on 
 earth, and in all places." " Then God is everywhere
 
 THE SWEET SMELLER 27 
 
 at our house, Father? " " Yes, my child." " And he's 
 in the room with papa, mama, my big sister, and 
 little Blanblan?" "Yes, my child." "And in the 
 wine-cellar too, Father? " " Yes, my child." " Oh 
 hell! Father. We've got no wine-cellar; we get our 
 wine by the litre from the wine-shop." 
 
 And now God did come to the wine-cellar; Pelaud 
 died there. The undertakers were a little drunk when 
 they came to get him, the day being Monday, and they 
 couldn't quite decide whether they were to bury him 
 on the spot or to take him out. But when they looked 
 out through the ventilating holes and /saw neither sky 
 nor green grass, they knew what to do. 
 
 The poor woman didn't stay weeping at Pere- 
 Lachaise for very long, and she came back to work 
 for her brats, who were crying for their father, and 
 looking for crusts of bread. 
 
 A few happy weeks followed, though she almost 
 killed herself with work, and could now only make 
 three francs a day, in her younger days she had 
 always earned six. Then the little artist died, and the 
 doctor told her it was because they lived in a cellar. 
 If she stayed there, she would lose them all, for they 
 had the disease that had carried off the father. 
 
 By a stroke of good luck she found another garret, 
 and moved there at once. Simone was only strong 
 enough to look after the kids; she blew their noses, 
 washed them, made them kiss and make up after
 
 28 PEOPLE 
 
 fighting, and tried to keep them from thinking too 
 much about eating, until their poor mother, who 
 worked eighteen hours a day, had earned the price of 
 their food. 
 
 Mme. Pelaud lost little time in sleep. The mo- 
 ment she got into the family bed, the kids, pushed 
 together by her presence, began to wriggle their little 
 bodies violently, in order to enlarge their share of the 
 mattress. The cover was pulled hard in every direc- 
 tion, and then retained by putting it between the teeth, 
 and those who slept with their mouths open had to do 
 without it. Their mother could scarcely ever settle 
 down to a good sleep, because of the continuous kick- 
 ing and flinging about, and she generally got up and 
 sat on a chair, where she thought she could rest. But 
 as soon as she was seated, she automatically took up 
 her work. 
 
 She was really no more than an animal; for her, life 
 meant feeding her children. And this would be the 
 death of her. She had no other Faith or Principles. 
 
 Simone, who was always such a help to her, became 
 weaker and weaker, and finally died. And then 
 Mme. Pelaud understood that she was simply work- 
 ing to feed Death, who would knock them all down. 
 She, the last, would complete the pile. 
 
 But their cries of hunger quickened the nimble 
 fingers that moulded and coloured sugar angels for 
 weddings and banquets.
 
 MONSIEUR ROBLED'S THROAT 
 
 THE worthy M. Robled, professor of mathematics, had 
 a bad cough. It was an effort for him to make his 
 wheezy voice heard, and this gave him the appearance 
 of being angry. He wouldn't see a doctor, but he took 
 a cough syrup to please his pupils. He refused to 
 make any concessions, and gave his lessons in a voice 
 which was, each day, more laboured. 
 
 " Your cough still hangs on? " his friends asked 
 him. 
 
 He was a stocky little man, and he puffed out his 
 broad chest to reply: " It's much better." 
 
 You felt that he was really screaming, but only the 
 remnant of his voice could be heard. 
 
 His friend, M. Grulois, was greeted with the follow- 
 ing information: "He is at the Saint- Antoine Hospi- 
 tal. He finally consented to undergo an examination, 
 and they find that he probably has cancer of the 
 throat." 
 
 M. Grulois, a young man with pink cheeks, did not 
 try to discover whether his vigorous pace in the direc- 
 tion of the hospital was the result of delight in his 
 excellent health, or of the satisfaction he got from 
 being a faithful friend. 
 
 29
 
 30 PEOPLE 
 
 A nurse directed him: " The first ward, and turn 
 to the right." 
 
 The healthy appearance of this appetizing woman 
 in her fresh linen blouse pleased him greatly. He 
 opened the door of the ward, and saw heads and hands 
 moving in the white bedclothes. The stare of many 
 pairs of solemn eyes kept him standing there by the 
 door of the bright room. Then suddenly his attention 
 was monopolized by the figure of a woman, who was 
 not looking at him. Some cushions enabled her to sit 
 up in her bed, so thin and so white that one would 
 have thought her dead, had her eyes been closed. 
 She was looking at a weman, dressed in black, who 
 stood beside her. The nurse stopped for a second, 
 and spoke to the dying woman: " You feel a little 
 better? " 
 
 She shook her head, and the woman in black looked 
 at the floor. 
 
 " Oh, but you do, you do! " replied the nurse, and 
 then she came up to M. Grulois. 
 
 " M. Robled? This way." And she pointed to a 
 private room, near the door. Before going in M. 
 Grulois asked about the dying woman: 
 
 " What's the matter with her? " 
 
 " She suffers a great deal; she's got a little of every- 
 thing. It will be all over soon. Yesterday we thought 
 she had died, and they called in her sister." 
 
 M. Grulois felt subdued and rather uneasy; the
 
 MONSIEUR ROBLED'S THROAT 31 
 
 atmosphere of this room, where death was waiting, 
 unnerved him; he trembled, and his eyes grew 
 large. 
 
 "This way," repeated the nurse. She opened the 
 door, and he should have gone in, but he could only 
 take one step. Sitting on a chair near the bed, M. 
 Robled seemed, owing to his extreme slenderness, to 
 have grown back to the age of fourteen. Beneath a 
 nose which had doubled in length, his mouth looked 
 like a black hole, and his enormous eyes glowed with 
 fury in his dried-up face. M. Grulois supposed that 
 his enforced inactivity was the cause of this anger. 
 
 " You feel a little better? " 
 
 M. Robled shook his head. 
 
 " Oh, but you do, you do ! " insisted his friend, and 
 he realized that he was repeating the nurse's words to 
 the dying woman. 
 
 M. Robled stood up: his back, which had been filled 
 out with muscles, now fell inwards on either side of 
 his spine. His clothes had become enormous upon his 
 poor thin body, and he looked like a child dressed in 
 its father's overcoat. He held a note-book in his bony 
 white-nailed hands, and while he was writing in it, 
 M. Grulois noticed the tube through which he 
 was given his food, among the folds of his neck 
 scarf. 
 
 M. Robled held out the note-book, in which was 
 written:
 
 32 PEOPLE 
 
 " Bring me some books." 
 
 " Certainly," said M. Grulois, " certainly. I'll bring 
 enough to keep you going for two weeks. In that 
 time you'll be cured." 
 
 M. Robled glared at him. " Why," his friend won- 
 dered, "is he so irritated? Is it my insincerity? 
 Does he know he is done for? And suppose he doesn't 
 know it? " 
 
 M. Robled shook hands with him, and went over to 
 open the door in spite of his protests: " Please don't 
 bother. Please! " 
 
 " So that's it; he's deceiving himself. He's not out 
 of his mind. A man who knows he's at the point of 
 death doesn't take his friends to the door. And he 
 shaved this morning too. On the other hand, he 
 looked at me as if he thought I wasn't honest with 
 him. Did he know it was cancer last month? He 
 waited until the thing almost strangled him before he 
 believed it was serious, and he went to the doctor only 
 when he was no longer able to talk or eat. Who was 
 he making fun of, with that syrup of his? Does he 
 know he's a dead man? Does he know it? " 
 
 The next visit would be very difficult, and the pros- 
 pect terrified M. Grulois. It exasperated him not to 
 know what was in M. Robled's mind. 
 
 " Must I be sincere," he thought, " and kill him 
 mentally; or must I feed his hopes with my false- 
 hoods? "
 
 MONSIEUR ROBLED'S THROAT 33 
 
 After four days he came again. M. Robled had 
 grown thinner, a thing that, on the first visit, had 
 seemed impossible. His nose had sharpened now al- 
 most to a point, but his eyes glowed with the same 
 force, and his eyelids were dry. M. Grulois put the 
 books, some biscuits, and a bottle of wine on the 
 table; then he started to talk to his friend as he 
 would have done before his illness about people they 
 both knew and things they both cared for. M. Robled 
 conversed by means of his note-book, and once his 
 friend was unable to make out what he meant, so he 
 mumbled his answer with an assumed air of under- 
 standing. M. Robled tore the page from the book, 
 glaring at him furiously, and M. Grulois thought to 
 himself: 
 
 "He suspects nothing! The cause of his irritation 
 is simple enough. He's not angry with me because 
 I'm lying, but because I don't understand him. It's 
 annoying and humiliating for him." So he started to 
 talk cheerfully of the things M. Robled would do when 
 in good health again. M. Robled stood up, his over- 
 powering gaze still fixed upon his friend, who did 
 not dare to stop talking. Then he suddenly turned his 
 back, covered his face with both hands, and buried his 
 head in the bedclothes. He did not move for a second 
 or two, and in that time the truth struck M. Grulois 
 /like the lash of a whip: the sick man knew that he 
 would be dead in a few days.
 
 34 PEOPLE 
 
 M. Robled turned around, and his friend, who now 
 maintained a dignified silence, looked him honestly in 
 the eye, shook hands, and was shown again to the 
 door. 
 
 By means of frequent calls, M. Grulois acquired 
 great satisfaction, and his opinion of himself increased 
 with each visit, but his intimacy with this man, who 
 was pledged to unrelenting Death, finally enabled him 
 to see so clearly into his own mind that he came to 
 despise himself. 
 
 " What a shameful thing it is," he thought, " for me 
 to puff myself up with pride, just because I'm a faith- 
 ful friend to this wretched man. Still, if I bring him 
 any pleasure, I don't suppose it matters. But how 
 can I do this? He's only a bundle of suffering, and 
 what good can I do him? Oh, the supreme cruelty 
 that retards the death of doomed men! There is no 
 one who loves this man enough to put an end to his 
 frightful agony. And where could kindness be found 
 that would be courageous enough to accomplish it? 
 Perhaps someone would do it if he were confident that 
 the action would be considered as praiseworthy as 
 coming faithfully to see him." 
 
 One day he brought a revolver with him, but he 
 lacked the courage to leave it on the bed when he 
 went away. The nurse asked him not to tire M. 
 Robled with long visits, and this made it easier to 
 endure the annoyance of no longer knowing what to
 
 MONSIEUR ROBLED'S THROAT 35 
 
 reply to the scribbled questions, which became each 
 day more difficult to read. M. Grulois arrived at com- 
 plete sincerity; he was what he was: a man watching 
 another man die. He acted from pure, unaffected 
 kindness. One morning he went to see his friend with- 
 out even feeling glad that his motives were absolutely 
 unselfish. It was his final purification. 
 
 The nurse met him at the door of M. Robled's 
 room. " He isn't there any longer. He died in the 
 night, and we found him lying stretched out very 
 straight on his bed. He wrote his will on a leaf 
 from his note-book; his body goes to the Medical 
 School." 
 
 " Was it legible? " asked M. Grulois. 
 
 " Yes, I read it." 
 
 Some of M. Robled's other friends came, and they 
 decided: 
 
 " We'll go to his autopsy, as though it were a 
 funeral." And they went the next morning to a long, 
 well-lighted room with flowers blooming at the win- 
 dows. M. Robled's bony corpse was lying naked upon 
 the operating table, and M. Grulois was so used to 
 regarding him as a corpse before his death, that he 
 now appeared to him to be alive, chiefly because of 
 the determined expression upon his features. A young 
 man in a white gown and rubber gloves made a long 
 incision at the throat, probed about, and lifted out the 
 red tumour, which let fall a drop of blood upon M.
 
 36 PEOPLE 
 
 Robled's emaciated chest. The size of this parasite, 
 containing the life of the man it had killed, showed 
 how great his suffering had been. In his gloved hand 
 the dissector held up this powerful thing that M. 
 Robled had conquered.
 
 THE TIGHT-WADS 
 
 M. VERDIER, a gentleman of independent means, who 
 lived at Choisy-le-Roi, was taking his dog for a walk 
 in the public gardens, and, seeing her scratching the 
 earth at the foot of a tree, he snapped his whip: " Not 
 here, Diane; the town is rich enough. Save that for 
 my vegetables." 
 
 Two plumbers, who were attending to the piping of 
 the fountain, had thrown aside a little wrought iron 
 cylinder. M. Verdier picked it up, and threw it down 
 one of the paths: "Go get it, Diane! " Then he 
 spoke to the workmen. " I will soon be wanting some 
 work done in my apartment house; and for goodness' 
 sake don't mess things up like the last time! It's 
 always like that when people work in houses that don't 
 belong to them. Something always happens when you 
 have to have work done." 
 
 At the end of the garden he picked up the cylinder, 
 as though he were going to throw it again, but put it 
 in his pocket and took it home, where he put it in a 
 box with other odds and ends old clothes and little 
 pieces of metal. Then he went to Diane's iron food- 
 bowl, which contained a white bone, and scolded the 
 poor thing, who was now lying in her little house with 
 her wet muzzle on the sill: " You lazy brute! Don't 
 
 37
 
 38 PEOPLE 
 
 you know yet how to strip a bone? " For there was 
 a thin coating of fat still upon it. 
 
 M. Verdier dug his nails into the ash-bin a tiny 
 one, for they never threw much away to make sure 
 there were no cinders that could be used over again. 
 Then he called out: 
 
 "Mme. Verdier! Put the tops of the leeks into 
 Diane's mush," to which she replied promptly from 
 her kitchen, which was hung with heavy copper uten- 
 sils: 
 
 "That only uses more coal, and when they're 
 cooked they're as hard as pieces of wood and stick in 
 her throat. She no sooner eats them than up they 
 come again, so what's the use? " 
 
 At the end of the avenue, a huckster began to cry 
 his wares. M. Verdier opened the garden gate, and 
 watched the bony horse slowly approaching him, to the 
 accompaniment of " Rabbit skins! Rabbit skins! " 
 in a strong Limousin accent. 
 
 While he waited, M. Verdier shrugged his shoulders 
 in scornful contemplation of his tenants, who always 
 threw away their potato-skins, and other things too 
 which were much more precious, to judge by Diane's 
 delighted rummaging, she was let loose at this profit- 
 able moment, in the feast of garbage. She brought 
 back a bone to enjoy at her leisure, but her master 
 took it from her and put it in his box of odds and 
 ends.
 
 THE TIGHT-WADS 39 
 
 The huckster greeted his old client, and stopped his 
 wagon, which had rabbit skins, with the hair brushed 
 the wrong way, hanging from the lantern brackets. 
 He lifted out the filthy contents of the box with his 
 greasy hands, and made his offer: 
 
 " Three sous." 
 
 M. Verdier sorted over the objects. "The bone's 
 the cheapest thing there, and it's worth a sou. You 
 want too much. There are plenty of other buyers. 
 Four sous." 
 
 Rabbit Skin wanted to split the difference. " Three 
 and a half sous. I'll even up with you for the half- 
 sou next time I come." 
 
 M. Verdier stopped him from turning the box up- 
 side down, and made him lift the things out. " Don't 
 stir them up! " 
 
 The greasy sides and bottom were covered with 
 a thick layer of maggots, which he used for 
 bait, and he often obliged his fellow fishermen 
 with a sou's worth or two when they had run 
 short of it. 
 
 When he had put through his deal with Rabbit Skin, 
 M. Verdier shovelled some manure around a lilac bush, 
 from a bucket which he carried with him when he 
 went driving in his little carriage. In this he collected 
 his horse's manure, for he had trained Musketeer so 
 well that when his tail went up he came to a halt, 
 and it wasn't necessary to get out and run back along
 
 40 PEOPLE 
 
 the road. He said to himself, " If the roads are dirty, 
 it's not my fault." 
 
 M. Verdier went indoors to get warm, though the 
 movable stove, pushed around through the ground- 
 floor rooms by Mme. Verdier, contained the tiniest of 
 fires. Then, in obedience to a long-established habit, 
 he lay down upon his bed for a moment, with all his 
 clothes on, for a chat with his wife. She was fifty 
 years old, and so thin that she seemed like the cord 
 attached to her little round balloon of a husband. He 
 mentioned a leakage: 
 
 " The tap in the kitchen is dropping, and it shows 
 on the metre. A sou soon goes that way. If you're 
 careful of sous you'll never be poor. At the beginning, 
 Mme. Verdier, I made up my mind to try to be a sou 
 richer each day." 
 
 They called each other Monsieur and Madame, be- 
 cause their business, " Wines and Liquors, Wholesale 
 and Retail," had obliged them to, for thirty years, and 
 it had now become a habit. 
 
 M. Verdier was good at making people drink, and 
 he had won thousands of aperitives and half-pints of 
 wine by playing Zanzi. For this reason, at the age 
 of fifty-two, he had great difficulty in walking, and 
 found himself the father of a twenty-five-year-old 
 government clerk, who earned two thousand francs a 
 month, and who, to purge his system of the alcoholic 
 inheritance which had left him with no hair at the
 
 THE TIGHT-WADS 41 
 
 age of twenty-five, was condemned to drinking nothing 
 but mineral water. 
 
 " I'm going to make some changes in the bath- 
 room," announced Mme. Verdier. She made use of 
 this convenience once a month during the summer, and 
 in the winter there were pots of geraniums in the bath- 
 tubs, the watering of which kept the enamel from for- 
 getting what water felt like. 
 
 The tenants who had paid their rent promptly were 
 offered this privilege, " Would you like to see the bath- 
 room? " 
 
 M. Verdier, thoroughly warm again, began . to go 
 over the weekly accounts: " Rolls . . . three sous. 
 We get bread by the loaf, Mme. Verdier, and what's 
 the use in spending three sous when there are loaves 
 in the house? You don't get rich by making money; 
 the thing to do is to save it, every sou ! If the tenants 
 want bread to take with them when they go out walk- 
 ing, give them some off the loaf at four sous a pound. 
 Those three rolls didn't weigh a half-pound." 
 
 Mme. Verdier, who always got the makings of a 
 bread pudding, or Diane's mush, from the table scrap- 
 ings and left-over crusts, was, however, anxious to ex- 
 cuse herself further, and asked her husband's advice 
 about another economy. " I've got two egg-shellg 
 from yesterday. Haven't you anything to clean? 
 I've done my decanters, and I hate throwing away* 
 perfectly good egg-shells."
 
 42 PEOPLE 
 
 M. Verdier was ready with two suggestions. " They 
 can be used to keep the fire in, or you might crush 
 them for polishing your brasses. That would save 
 sand." 
 
 The bell rang, and Diane barked loudly. M. Ver- 
 dier looked through the curtains, and saw that it was 
 M. Mercerin. " Mme. Verdier, you'll have to tell 
 him I'm not here. I know what he wants, and I won't 
 go on the Town Council. No thank you! Look at 
 the clothes I'd have to buy; and after the meetings 
 each member has to stand for a round of drinks. And 
 there are collections for the poor. You've got to count 
 on making a big hole in a hundred-franc note every 
 year. I pay my taxes; why don't they leave me 
 alone? " 
 
 M. Jules Verdier arrived by the twelve-seven train, 
 and a smile spread over his puffy face at the thought 
 of anyone giving time and money to the Town 
 Council. He had more serious matters to talk 
 about: 
 
 "I saw my boss to-day, and I'm going to have a 
 raise at the end of the year; probably a hundred and 
 fifty francs." 
 
 His round face, as expressive as a piece of blank 
 paper, three holes in a ball, proclaimed the complete 
 emptiness of his head; his father had not dared to 
 spend the money for his education! He was incapable 
 of doing anything except under orders, but he had in-
 
 THE TIGHT-WADS 43 
 
 herited from his father the enjoyment of counting the 
 sous he saved. 
 
 M. Verdier consulted him every month as to the 
 investment of his yearly saving of eleven thousand 
 francs out of an income of fifteen thousand. 
 
 In a slow, effeminate voice M. Jules told him the 
 day's quotations, and then his father held forth a little 
 on the general question of investment: " You must 
 never lend to private individuals, even to the most 
 industrious, for they are likely to get ill from over- 
 work. If you want your money to be safe, put it in 
 concerns that can't blow up, like the Government, or 
 one of the big Banks. If God wanted me to lend him 
 money, I'd do it, but not to men. Buy me ninety 
 francs of income in 1919 Russian Loan 4^ percents 
 at 100.45." 
 
 M. Jules added it up: " 2009 francs." 
 
 s 
 
 T 
 
 '
 
 A MAN WITH A SOFT JOB 
 
 ONE afternoon at three o'clock M. Prosper-Paul 
 Mache, the well-known author, went to see M. Karl- 
 Albert George, who welcomed him with apparent 
 delight. 
 
 "Hello, Prosper-Paul! I'm awfully glad to see 
 you." 
 
 He took the outstretched hand in both of his own, 
 as though to warm it, and smiled affectionately. His 
 big black eyes opened wide with astonishment at the 
 sight of his friend, and the welcoming words fell 
 rapidly and distinctly from his clean-shaven lips. 
 
 M. Prosper-Paul Mache had been clean-shaven two 
 days before, and he was bald, except for a wreath qf 
 long hair on a level with his ears, which kept his coat 
 collar in a continual state of filthiness. One would 
 have thought that, with the fortune he was known to 
 possess, he could have afforded a higher standard of 
 personal appearance. He sat in the proffered chair 
 like a hunting dog, for his back was tired. Writing 
 was his sole occupation, and he got out of his bed 
 to sit down in his chair. Now he crossed his legs 
 nervously, and grasped his right foot with his left 
 hand, then he changed his mind, and seized hold of 
 his left one with his right hand. 
 
 44
 
 A MAN WITH A SOFT JOB 45 
 
 The welcoming smile died out of M. Karl-Albert 
 George's face, and was replaced by a fresh set of 
 wrinkles upon his serious brow. He brought the palm 
 of his hand down upon a pile of manuscript, and said: 
 
 " I've read it, and in my opinion you have given 
 us there a very beautiful thing. I was greatly moved 
 by it. That man who, when his son reaches the age 
 of puberty, fears that he may contract some disease, 
 and orders him to indulge in sexual intercourse with 
 his mother, so that her splendid health, reproduced 
 in him, may maintain his purity ... ah, the 
 astounding reality of those four acts of yours! 
 Astounding! And those amazing scenes between that 
 selfish brute of a son, who is blind to everything but 
 his own personal pleasure, and the father, who has the 
 future of his family at heart! I know of nothing to 
 compare with it in French literature." 
 
 A man-servant entered, and spoke stiffly from the 
 doorway: 
 
 " The carpenter you sent for is here, sir." 
 
 "Let him come in at once," said M. Karl-Albert 
 George delightedly, again taking one of his friend's 
 hands between both of his own. M. Prosper-Paul 
 stopped smiling and looked at his shoes. 
 
 " I do beg your pardon, Prosper-Paul, but there's 
 something here that nearly drives me mad. The shelf 
 of this bookcase is loose. Listen: toe . . . toe. 
 ... It does that whenever I touch it, and I can't
 
 46 PEOPLE 
 
 keep my hands off it. It's impossible to do any 
 work! " 
 
 He seemed to be suffering agonies; his long white 
 fingers clasped and unclasped, and he put his feet 
 alternately one on top of the other. 
 
 A tool-box bumped against the door, and the car- 
 penter waited, at the edge of the carpet, for someone 
 to tell him what to do, devouring the rich furnishings 
 with bright mischievous eyes. His black hair was full 
 of little curled shavings, and he was undoubtedly a 
 real wit. One felt that he was smiling inwardly, and 
 he pursed his lips as though to whistle. 
 
 " This way, my friend," said M. Karl-Albert George, 
 and he placed his shiny pink finger nails upon the edge 
 of the loose board, which brought on another attack 
 of nerves. 
 
 " It's the bracket wants straightening," announced 
 the carpenter, " or mebbe the shelf's warped. I'll see 
 to it." He set his tool-box down on the carpet, and 
 slowly began to take out his tools, that gleamed as 
 brightly as M. Karl-Albert George's finger nails. 
 
 M. Prosper-Paul Mache scratched his head, and, 
 finding a loose piece of skin, he held it like a pinch 
 of snuff between his thumb and forefinger, close to his 
 near-sighted eyes, and examined it with satisfaction. 
 
 " Let's go into my little study," said M. Karl-Albert 
 George, collecting some pages of manuscript from the 
 desk, and continuing his praises:
 
 A MAN WITH A SOFT JOB 47 
 
 " That splendid fourth act, where the father 
 threatens to call down maledictions upon his rebellious 
 son, is so full of emotion that ... so full of 
 emotion ..." He made up for the recalcitrant 
 phrase by a resounding emphasis on the last syllable, 
 which he brought forth with great fervour, raising his 
 eyes to the ceiling, and placing one hand upon his 
 breast. 
 
 M. Prosper-Paul Mache, though he was on his feet, 
 still sagged appallingly. His knees were slightly bent, 
 and his spine curved languidly. 
 
 " However . . . " continued M. Karl-Albert 
 George; but the door closed upon his friend's droop- 
 ing figure, and nothing more could be heard. 
 
 The carpenter, kneeling beside his array of tools, 
 took up his plane, which was at the right, and set it 
 down again on the left. Then he rose slowly to his 
 feet, tapped the books on the shelf gently, and spoke 
 to the man-servant: 
 
 "Them's got to come out! " 
 
 " I'm not stopping you from moving them, am I? " 
 replied M. Jean, who had thrown himself into the 
 chair where M. Prosper-Paul Mache had been sitting. 
 He was doing his finger nails, and flicked off the pieces 
 that fell on to his yellow and black striped waist- 
 coat. 
 
 " I'd like to put me feet in your shoes," said the 
 workman. " I'm a carpenter, and does me work by
 
 48 PEOPLE 
 
 th' hour." With great care he took six books from 
 the shelf, and threw them across the carpet. 
 
 M. Jean shut up his knife: 
 
 "You workmen are impossible! There'd have to 
 be a crying need before I'd have one in any house of 
 mine. Books, my friend, aren't chunks of wood! 
 They're supposed to be handled carefully. You've 
 got to take them out in order, so that they can be 
 put back in order. Do you get me? In order! " 
 
 " That ain't nothin' to do with me. I'm a car- 
 penter." 
 
 The man-servant felt it to be beneath his dignity to 
 insist, so he began to remove them himself. The 
 carpenter watched him for a moment; then he said: 
 
 " I don't mind helpin' ye. Your job's a heavy one, 
 eh? Lucky guy, to be able to set on somethin' soft 
 now and then. When do ye quit, nights? Is he bad- 
 tempered, yer boss? " 
 
 M. Jean replied by making a face, his lips were 
 twisted anyhow, from his constant habit of sneering, 
 and thereby reserved his opinion of M. Karl-Albert 
 George, and avoided becoming confidential with a 
 social inferior. 
 
 "Oh, the bosses we fellas has to work for is all 
 alike," declared the carpenter; "ye've got to want 
 work awful bad to do it. Is yours the one was sittin' 
 where you are? " And he pointed to the chair M. 
 Prosper-Paul Mache had occupied.
 
 A MAN WITH A SOFT JOB -49 
 
 M. Jean shrugged his shoulders scornfully at the 
 idea of anyone being unable to distinguish between the 
 master of the house and a visitor. 
 
 "Ah, then it's the other," deduced the carpenter, 
 "the guy that was sayin' he was full of emotion" 
 He ended the word with the same resounding em- 
 phasis, and struck an attitude surprisingly like that of 
 M. Jean's master. 
 
 The man-servant and the workman took their time 
 over the books, transporting them by a chain of opera- 
 tions from the shelf to the carpet. M. Jean stood by 
 the bookcase, and the carpenter squatted Turkish 
 \ fashion on the floor. He asked: 
 
 " What's yer boss do? " 
 
 "Dramatic critic," was the condescending an- 
 swer. 
 
 " What the hell kind of a job's that? " 
 
 The carpenter had to answer himself: 
 
 "He's an actor, what! Perhaps he knows a butty 
 o' mine, who gits thirty sous a night for playin' the 
 titled gentlemen at the Porte Saint-Martin." 
 
 M. Jean again shrugged his shoulders, and this time 
 the carpenter was angry: 
 
 " I gives ye a hand 'cause ye're tired, and now I 
 can't get a word out o' ye. I ask ye now politely, 
 what the hell is it ye're sayin'? " 
 
 "A dramatic critic, my friend, is a person who 
 goes to see plays, and says what he thinks of them."
 
 50 PEOPLE 
 
 The workman burst into a roar of laughter, and 
 held his sides; then he said pleasantly: 
 
 "Ever get yer mouth smashed? Some guy ought 
 to do it fer ye." 
 
 " You came here to fix that shelf, didn't you? " 
 sneered M. Jean, and the left corner of his mouth 
 curled upwards. He held out a book to the workman 
 impatiently. 
 
 " Gently, me boy, gently. We ain't doin' time here, 
 and I ain't the man to split a gut when there's no 
 call to. Don't I got to stop when I laughs? Yer 
 pullin' me leg; goin' to theaiters ain't workin'. A guy 
 'u'd be a damn fool to believe that kind o' bull." 
 
 M. Jean turned his back, and wobbled the half- 
 empty shelf: 
 
 " Are you going to be able to fix that? " 
 
 "I know me business; there's nobody can tell me 
 what to do. I done jobs in the Faubourg Saint- 
 Antoine, and that's why they calls me Bastille. But 
 me real name's Martin, Jules Martin." 
 
 They continued in silence, until the last book was 
 laid on the carpet. Then the carpenter got up, wob- 
 bled the shelf, and studied it from every angle. 
 
 " Have you got much to do to it," asked the man- 
 servant, "and are going to dirty up the whole 
 room? " 
 
 " A job can always be done without makin' a mess. 
 There ain't goin' to be a single shavin' on yer damn
 
 A MAN WITH A SOFT JOB 51 
 
 carpet. Now off with ye, if ye're too stuck up to tell 
 me what yer boss's job is; I've got work to do." 
 
 He lifted the shelf to the floor, and, placing his knee 
 upon it, took up his plane. M. Jean changed his 
 manner: 
 
 " Really, I'm not joking. It's my master's business 
 to go to plays, and then write his opinion of them. 
 Here's his last article." He opened a newspaper, and 
 read aloud in a patronizing voice: 
 
 " ' M. Matulu's play, La Femme Triomphale, is a 
 splendid achievement. Bravo! Matulu! The third 
 act is masterly; there is no conscious striving after lit- 
 erary perfection, and at the same time we find passion 
 and fury depicted there, with consummate dramatic 
 art. . . . ' I do not hold my master's opinion of the 
 third act of La Femme Triomphale" he said. " The 
 play is evidently a splendid one. However ..." 
 
 "And he gets paid money," demanded Martin in 
 bewilderment, " fer goin' an' settin' in a theaiter? " 
 
 "He makes a great deal of money." 
 
 M. Jean enjoyed the effect he was making with his 
 exaggerated account of his master's wealth, and the 
 carpenter could scarcely contain his indignation: 
 
 " What a job to give a guy! " Then he replaced 
 the warped shelf, reversing its old position, so that 
 the four corners rested firmly upon the brackets, and 
 began to collect his tools. 
 
 " Have you finished? " cried M. Jean, incredulously,
 
 52 PEOPLE 
 
 trying in vain to wobble the shelf. " I guess you know 
 your business," he added. 
 
 Martin puffed out his chest: 
 
 "I've worked in the Faubourg Saint- Antoine, and 
 this ain't empty." He tapped his forehead with a stiff 
 forefinger. 
 
 M. Karl- Albert George emerged from his study, on 
 his way to the door with M. Prosper-Paul Mache, and 
 he darted across the room to feel the shelf; a sigh 
 of relief escaped him when it refused to wobble under 
 the pressure of his hand. 
 
 " Well done, my friend," he said to Martin, " very 
 nicely done! " And, smiling with satisfaction, he fol- 
 lowed M. Prosper-Paul Mache out of the room. 
 
 Martin leaned back against the bookcase and burst 
 into gales of laughter, holding his sides with both 
 hands, and opening wide his great big-toothed mouth. 
 
 "When you're done spluttering all over me, you 
 can put those books back in their places," announced 
 M. Jean, and Martin's laughter came to a sudden stop. 
 He crossed his arms before replying: 
 
 "Aw, you expect too much of a fella. Look, I've 
 been hangin' around here fer two hours, and my boss'll 
 be expectin' me back. You ain't the only folks as 
 needs the carpenter." 
 
 He strapped his tool-box on to his shoulder, and, 
 struggling bravely to keep back a fresh torrent of 
 laughter, he repeated:
 
 A MAN WITH A SOFT JOB 53 
 
 "And he gets paid money fer that! " 
 His cheeks were bulging precariously as he went 
 lout, and M. Jean saw him flop down on a bench by 
 the sidewalk, where he gave full rein to his merriment, 
 and wiped his eyes on his coat sleeve. 

 
 GRACIEUSE 
 
 GRACIEUSE was the daughter of old Mother Courli, 
 who had lived for the last fifteen years in the rue 
 Rebeval. Mother Courli was well aware that to 
 wander aimlessly in the streets spelled ruin for little 
 girls, and she passed this knowledge on to her daugh- 
 ter, whom she sent to learn how to make funeral 
 wreaths. 
 
 " Don't ever stop to look at store windows, or when 
 someone tries to talk to you. Don't slow up for any- 
 thing! " So Gracieuse never slowed up, and she made 
 free use of the only insult she knew, " Horrid thing! ", 
 when men spoke to her because they wanted her frag- 
 rant young body. Her skin was like mother-of-pearl, 
 and seemed transparent, and her pretty blue eyes were 
 always laughing. 
 
 Her father had been pensioned by a big company, 
 and since his death Mme. Courli received half the 
 money. Every three months, she went through the 
 copper-handled doors, and sat down for an hour on a 
 cloth-covered bench in front of a barred window. 
 Then she thanked a speechless cashier, with white 
 hair and red eyes, for her hundred francs. 
 
 Gracieuse was soon earning twenty-five sous a day, 
 
 54
 
 GRACIEUSE 55 
 
 and she liked her job, for she could steal ribbon. 
 When she went to deliver a straw wheel covered with 
 everlasting, she said to the boy who carried it for her, 
 " Roll it. It's much easier! " And she took along an 
 extra six or eight inches of moire, for she was clever 
 at doing bows over again. 
 
 On Sundays she set forth all covered with funeral 
 ribbons, and there was a pink cord drawn through her 
 dun-coloured chignon, that shook when she laughed 
 her little birdlike laugh. The wind played with the 
 tufts of hair at her neck that were too short to be held 
 in place by her comb. And she had a red ribbon tied 
 round her neck. Children in the street stroked her 
 white belt, and untied the blue ribbon bows at her 
 nimble feet. 
 
 In the spring she became a different person. Some- 
 one tipped her a franc and she ate fifteen ices at the 
 Place de la Bastille which cost her fifteen sous, and 
 then went up the July Column to see if it really 
 moved to and fro. Her mistress was cross at her 
 for being late, but added, "Well, anyhow, does it 
 move? " 
 
 " I don't know. When I got there, I forgot all 
 about it! " She seemed to have no control over her 
 feet, and always wanted to run. Her mother was worn 
 out with her endless fidgeting, and gave up walking 
 arm in arm with her: "If you don't keep still, child, 
 bad luck'll come to you! "
 
 56 PEOPLE 
 
 One Sunday at the Buttes-Chaumont, delighted with 
 a fresh outfit of ribbon bows, she was cutting capers 
 around a bed of irises, standing proudly behind their 
 guard of green sabre blades, when she suddenly no- 
 ticed a boy of sixteen devouring her with his black 
 eyes. She had no desire to run, and the next day 
 he met her again on her way to the work- 
 room. 
 
 " Hello, Mademoiselle Claire! " 
 
 " No," she answered, " I'm Gracieuse." 
 
 "And I'm Paul . . . Andry." 
 
 They told each other where they worked; he, in a 
 studio where scenery was painted. That was his ex- 
 cuse for wearing an enormous necktie and bulging 
 trousers, and for allowing his beautiful hair to grow 
 'so long. 
 
 Gracieuse adored being loved, those summer eve- 
 nings in the moonlight, generally fatal to girls of 
 fifteen, and she found the longest walks she could. 
 What weather! Then came two weeks of rain, but it 
 was too late. She was going to have a baby! Her 
 anxiety was unbounded. In two months there would 
 be the festival of Samt-Fargeau. Would she be able 
 to dance? 
 
 " Sure thing," said one of her friends, " and danc- 
 ing'll unload you, too! " Then she learned of other 
 \ methods besides dancing. 
 \ On Sunday, Paul Andry bought five sous' worth of 

 
 GRACIEUSE 57 
 
 absinth and mixed it with half a litre of white wine, 
 and he took Gracieuse to his studio, reeking with pipe- 
 smoke, where they could be alone. He made her sit 
 by the cold stove, with its pipe zigzagging up to the 
 ceiling, and he held the bottle to her lips. She drank 
 it all, and it made her drunk, and sick after that. 
 Then she began to cry, for at the bottom of her 
 muddled little mind there was always that fear of 
 missing the festival. Paul took her to her door, and 
 then escaped. 
 
 Mother Courli saw what the trouble was, when 
 she put her - to bed, and was heartbroken by the 
 grievous discovery. Gracieuse slept for twelve solid 
 hours, and then woke up with the words: " I'm 
 thirsty." 
 
 " You don't deserve anything but water," said her 
 mother. 
 
 This produced a pouting declaration: "All right, 
 I'll drown myself! " And she went off to the caresses 
 of her little scene-painter; but it took her three days 
 to find him. 
 
 " It's all your fault," he said to her. " You left me 
 on Sunday without making a date! " And she saw 
 him looking over her head at other girls. 
 I When she got home, her mind was a tangle of spite- 
 fulness and humility. She missed sitting on her 
 mother's knees terribly. But Mme. Courli had no 
 more smiles for her, and Gracieuse was in despair.
 
 58 PEOPLE 
 
 She lost four pounds in two weeks, and her eyes looked 
 enormous in her little sunken face. 
 
 With hands clasped, she beseeched: " Mama, talk 
 to me, please! If you don't, I swear I'll drown 
 myself! " Then they wept in each other's arms. 
 
 "If he was a man," complained her mother, "he 
 could look after you. But he's only sixteen. His 
 people won't give him a sou. They don't earn much, 
 and the father's drunk all the time. It'll cost you 
 money to raise that kid! " 
 
 Paul Andry found another job, in a wall-paper fac- 
 tory near Bel-Air, and took a room in the Twelfth 
 Arrondissement. 
 
 Gracieuse was unable to walk that far, and she 
 asked a neighbour to lend her the money for her bus 
 fare. Some friends warned her: " Throw him over. 
 He's going with a feather-dresser now from the 
 Sentier." 
 
 But she stuck to his trail and, one evening, found 
 him straightening his tie before a shirt-maker's mirror 
 in the rue Saint-Denis. She had been running, and 
 her soaking underwear got cold and made her shiver. 
 Chilled to the bone and thoroughly miserable, she told 
 him, " I know perfectly well who you're waiting for. 
 You haven't any feelings at all! " 
 
 Paul wasn't really so bad; he bought her some of 
 Father Coupe Toujours' cake, gave her ten francs, and 
 saw her as far as the Place de la Republique, promis-
 
 GRACIEUSE 59 
 
 ing her everything she wanted. But he kept looking 
 at his watch. 
 
 She climbed the Faubourg du Temple again, with- 
 out looking where she was going; a driver had to stop 
 his bus to avoid knocking her down, and swore vio- 
 lently at her, and the fear of getting killed made her 
 think of ending her life. But not under a bus! 
 
 She stood at the edge of the canal, and watched 
 the people passing; everybody looked ugly and care- 
 worn. She had been happy up to now, and for her 
 the world had contained nothing but happiness; now 
 there was only sadness. Her despair evoked the 
 memory of an experience of her childhood. When she 
 was only five, she wanted to have black eyes, and her 
 hands had to be held to stop her from scratching out 
 her pretty blue ones. 
 
 She wandered along, looking for a good place to 
 jump from. A filthy mass of sewerage had collected 
 around a small boat moored to the side of the canal. 
 Not in that! . . . 
 
 Opposite the Customs the water pleased her, but 
 too many people were passing. She was afraid to kill 
 herself, but she longed to die, and wished she could 
 shut her eyes and have someone push her. 
 
 To have to hesitate and choose the right place pre- 
 vented her from doing anything; quick impulsive ac- ' 
 lion was the only kind she knew. 
 
 And suddenly she ran home to Mother Courli to
 
 60 PEOPLE 
 
 say, "I almost drowned myself! It wouldn't have 
 taken much more ..." 
 
 " Cheer up, Dearie. Ca ira! " 
 
 And Gracieuse sang her mother's hopeful words: 
 
 " Ca irat Ca irat " 
 
 \ 
 
 V V 
 
 ' 
 
 H 
 
 \ 
 
 -
 
 MADEMOISELLE SOURIRE * 
 
 MADEMOISELLE SOURIRE was reading the written no- 
 tices pasted under the little arches of the Porte Saint- 
 Denis, where the old stonework was practically hidden 
 beneath a garment of paper: 
 
 106, Faubourg du Temple 
 Good hands required for forget-me-nots. 
 
 238, Rue Reaumur 
 Dubois & Cie., waist-makers. 
 
 Big Marcelle laid a hand, which bore two rings, 
 upon Mademoiselle Sourire's shoulder, " What about 
 it? " She was filled with pity for herself and the 
 other women, raised up on the toes of their well-worn 
 shoes, searching for the work they required. Were 
 there going to be many steps to climb? "When a 
 forewoman has all the help she wants, she don't come 
 and pull down her notice; it stays until it gets covered 
 by somebody else's. Ye've got to come early and see 
 it bein' stuck up, and then go off right away to the 
 address. I used to do that." 
 
 * Mademoiselle Sourire, " Miss Smile." 
 
 61
 
 62 PEOPLE 
 
 " If ye wait around here, ye're bothered to death 
 by these rotten men. They know us girls come here 
 because we ain't got no work." 
 
 Big Marcelle mentioned one of the advantages of 
 complaisance. " Anyhow, you'd get somethin' t' eat! " 
 She detached this predominant truth: "You've got to 
 eat! " 
 
 Mademoiselle Sourire pushed a lock of her black 
 hair back into its place, and explained how she made 
 her living: " It 'ud be terrible to get took up by these 
 men. It's much better to take any job ye find here, 
 whatever it is. When ye've got no special line, ye've 
 got to take what ye can get. Yesterday I was sewin' 
 babies' dresses. To-day I didn't get no more of them 
 to do, but I don't mind, because the pay was only six- 
 teen sous each, and only three rows of lace around the 
 skirt, and neck, and cuffs. Me mother does shoes, but 
 it's too dirty for me. Whenever the kids come any- 
 where near her, they get black all over. I've made 
 flowers, but the boss always tries to fleece ye. They 
 tell ye to leave samples of yer work, and send ye 
 away promisin' to send ye more work, but nothin' 
 ever comes. He keeps the samples. If twelve girls 
 was to come in one day to do violets, and each one 
 done a dozen, he 'ud have twelve dozen without payin' 
 a sou. A month ago I went to a feather-dresser in 
 the Passage des Petites-Ecuries, and she made me get 
 two wings and mount 'em, to show me work. I asked
 
 MADEMOISELLE SOURIRE 63 
 
 her if they was all right, and she said, ' Yes, and I'll 
 send ye some more to do.' But I kept me two wings 
 and said I'd bring 'em back when I finished the work 
 she was goin' to send me." 
 
 Big Marcelle shrugged her shoulders beneath an old 
 feather scarf: 
 
 " It ain't so silly for us to call ye Sourire; there's 
 smiles there all right. Ye'd be a pretty brunette if ye 
 didn't frown so much and take life so hard." Then 
 she went with her to one of the addresses they had 
 taken down. They entered, and stood in the corner 
 of a room full of all sorts of stuffs and materials. 
 There were three sewing-machines, one for the em- 
 ployer, and two for the apprentices, who earned five 
 sous a day at hemming, which was really the work 
 of a regular workwoman. 
 
 They were offered lingerie at two sous less per gar- 
 ment than they would have received from the shop, 
 and the forewoman scolded Mademoiselle Sourire for 
 frowning and pursing up her lips. 
 
 " Leave it if you don't like it. I don't like people 
 who complain. Who's going to pay for the shoe- 
 leather I wear out going to your rooms if you don't 
 bring the work in on time? And how about the cab 
 to get it and take it back to the shop? You save 
 your bus fare and your time because you live near by; 
 and I don't keep you waiting. Go have a look round, 
 and see if you can do better somewhere else." Then
 
 64 PEOPLE 
 
 she mentioned another possibility. " If it isn't enough 
 money, you'll have no trouble to earn what you need. 
 It isn't as if you were a man, and could only work 
 in the daytime. You've got another iron in the fire; 
 ask your friend whether she doesn't know how to 
 use it." 
 
 When they were outside, Big Marcelle spoke gently: 
 " Come along and I'll treat ye to a cup of coffee. 
 Ye've got a lovely skin and a good figure, and if ye 
 ate all ye wanted every day in the week ye'd be nice 
 and healthy looking. I know ye'd rather die than 
 have a man hangin' around, but your mother wouldn't 
 have ye locked up; ye're eighteen. Remember that 
 little burnisher? When she was twelve and a half 
 she used to run around with men, instead of goin' to 
 the work-school. The Sisters came to talk to her peo- 
 ple, but it was too late. They wanted to put her in 
 a work-school at Versailles, to change her way of 
 livin', but it wasn't an easy thing to get her there. 
 Her big brother said he'd take her to visit the Chateau, 
 and she started out, happy as you please, in her pret- 
 tiest dress. But when she found herself in the 
 waitin'-room of the school, she turned on him, callin' 
 him all sorts o' bad names, screamin' that she'd starve 
 herself if he left her there, and she wouldn't say 
 good-bye. But one of the Sisters, all in white, with 
 eyes as clear as tumblers of water, came and talked 
 nicely to her, and ten minutes later she told her
 
 MADEMOISELLE SOURIRE 65 
 
 brother she was sorry, and kissed him, and told him 
 to give her mother a kiss, too. She's back again now, 
 but she goes every Sunday to Versailles to see Sister 
 Cecile. When she has no money to buy her ticket, 
 she cries. Once she walked all the way, and the 
 Sister gave her another pair of shoes and paid her 
 way back by train." 
 
 Big Marcelle felt no regrets for herself while telling 
 her friend of the little burnisher, and she proceeded 
 to talk about the necessaries of life: "There's got to 
 be a lot of women in Paris, and there's plenty who go 
 the pace, young and old: them that walks the streets 
 every day, and them that does it only on Saturdays, 
 because their jobs don't bring them a livin'. Any 
 woman can find one or two men! There's always 
 plenty of 'em. They come to Paris from everywhere! 
 And there are women in the houses from Belgium, and 
 Germany, and every country." 
 
 She threw off her final estimate: " It's a rotten hole, 
 Paris! " as she might have said, "It rains a lot in 
 Paris." Then her thoughts went back to the Sisters: 
 " I used to know 'em too at the school, and they 
 liked me. When I was little, I was pretty, and I al- 
 ways tried to be a good girl. I wasn't never like 
 the others, only goin' there to complain, and make fun 
 of the Sisters. I liked them to kiss me, but now they 
 know I run around with men, and they never speak 
 to me. They ought to know a woman does what she
 
 66 PEOPLE 
 
 can. We can't all be Sisters." And she went on to 
 say how she liked going to church, and praying and 
 clasping her hands. Then she began to be concerned 
 about the fate of Mademoiselle Sourire: 
 
 " Ye'll kill yourself if ye keep on working like this 
 for fifteen sous a day! " and she added authoritatively, 
 " If I was your mother I'd box your ears." 
 
 Mademoiselle Sourire started to recount her trou- 
 bles: " The worst of all is me father. When I finishes 
 me work I got to hide it with the people next door. 
 If he sees me goin' to get me pay, he drinks up all 
 his money right off. I try to shame him because he 
 can't support us, but when he's drunk he says, ' I 
 could if I wanted to; a man can do anything. And 
 he doesn't try to do what's impossible.' And I've got 
 to understand that. When he ain't so drunk he slaps 
 me in the face. And I'm in specially hard luck now; 
 there's a rotten forewoman where I work: she ain't 
 even worth scratchin'. She gives a little more than 
 enough lace for the trimming to the ones she likes, but 
 she wouldn't give me an extra centimetre. Always 
 just the allowance, and no more. I ain't goin' back, 
 because I hate injustice, but I guess I'll have to take 
 it on again soon." 
 
 Was she crying? 
 
 A little new moon was climbing the sky, growing 
 brighter as the daylight faded; it seemed as tiny as 
 a crescent you'd buy at the baker's for a sou, and
 
 MADEMOISELLE SOURIRE 67 
 
 Big Marcelle longed to possess it; she would wear it 
 in her hair. 
 
 It was almost dinner time, and the rue de Belleville 
 was full of children clasping loaves of bread as tall 
 as they were themselves, and little girls with twisted 
 hair-ribbons, carrying litres of wine, like soldiers pre- 
 senting arms, and milk bottles containing six sous' 
 worth of steaming bouillon. 
 
 Mademoiselle Sourire was thinking of her obliga- 
 tions at home: " If me mother's been shoemakin' in- 
 stead of lightin' the fire, the kids'll be hungry, and 
 I promised 'em a stick of nougat. When I ain't got 
 money or work, they can't understand it. They'll 
 start bawlin', and then father'll be after 'em with a 
 stick." 
 
 " Don't worry, Dearie," said Big Marcelle, and she 
 gave her three francs, and bought ten sous' worth of 
 some sticky candy. 
 
 Then they went to Mademoiselle Sourire's home, a 
 ground floor room giving on to the court, where a 
 woman of about forty was hurrying to finish the shoe 
 she was working on. Two little children were playing 
 among the scattered shoes, between a washtub and a 
 tall cupboard with doors as thin as cigar-box wood, 
 which, somehow, was the family bread-box. 
 
 In an old jar that had once contained candy two 
 goldfish were nibbling bread-crumbs. The surface of 
 the water trembled with a vibration that shook the
 
 68 PEOPLE 
 
 windows and everything in the room. Mademoiselle 
 Sourire explained what this was: 
 
 " There's someone with eight sewin' machines above 
 us, and they're goin' the whole day long. The ceiling 
 comes down on us in pieces, but I've got to be nice 
 to her because she gives me work sometimes. She's 
 on to all the tricks of the trade. Every season she 
 gets hold of a model, and then goes around to all the 
 shops. Last year she found a little girl's summer 
 dress, and placed it with one of the big ones. She 
 started makin' in November, and for seven months 
 she never stopped; she gave out the work too, but 
 always the same model. The only change was in the 
 colour of the stuff and the kind of lace. And there 
 was some Germans who bought it off her to take 
 home with 'em." 
 
 Big Marcelle took the little boy by the hand: " You 
 ain't forgotten me, little Hustler? " 
 
 They called him that because he was a seven- 
 months' baby. Beneath a stubborn head of hair, his 
 solemn little face was smeared with shoe-blacking. 
 His mother adored him: " He loves to bite the shoes 
 like a little dog. Ye can see the marks of his teeth. 
 Look! " 
 
 Little Christiane showed her a pipe, with a piece 
 of cloth wrapped around the stem, and begged a kiss 
 for it, her youngest child. 
 
 Big Marcelle put the candy on the table, with its
 
 MADEMOISELLE SOURIRE 69 
 
 edges bent down by the weight of many elbows, and 
 the children gazed with eyes like saucers at this unex- 
 pected delight. Mademoiselle Sourire spoke to them 
 gently, and the deep lines in her poor tired face 
 softened a little: 
 
 " They ain't used to things like this. Well, it's for 
 you! Say 'Thank you' to the pretty lady." Then 
 she took Big Marcelle out again into the passage. 
 
 " It's a good thing I can earn a few crusts with 
 that machine of mine; it's an old wreck I won in a 
 lottery, and so hard to run that it almost breaks me 
 legs. Me father drinks up all he earns, and we're left 
 to make out for ourselves. I often feel like chuckin' 
 the whole thing, and I would if it wasn't for them 
 kids. Ain't they darlin's? Ye'll come and see 'em 
 sometime, when I get a chance to clean them up? " 
 
 Big Marcelle was reproachful: "Ye've got no 
 feelin's at all! If ye wasn't so damned decent, they'd 
 always be happy. Ye'll have bad luck if ye walk such 
 a straight line! " 
 
 Mademoiselle Sourire hung her head: 
 
 " I know it. When me mother was sick, I had 
 to get meat twice on credit. The woman next door 
 said, ' No work, but the butcher brings the meat just 
 the same.' As if I'd gotten it that way! " 
 
 Big Marcelle was surprised. " And the little feather- 
 dresser with the friend that used to come every 
 Sunday? "
 
 70 PEOPLE 
 
 Mademoiselle Sourire looked at her, wide-eyed: 
 "Oh! No! She was a nice little thing! Her 
 friend left her in trouble, and she couldn't pay the 
 midwife who saw her through. She went down to the 
 river, and it was funny nobody noticin' her, because it 
 was broad daylight. She'd gone so thin that the 
 water hardly went plonj! "
 
 THE SEINE RISES 
 
 (January, 1910} 
 
 IT had been raining for a week. The factory hands 
 at Choisy-le-Roi were obliged to put on wet shoes 
 every morning, and the cobblers, crouching in their 
 little stalls, did a good re-soling business. The suc- 
 cession of sunless days made everybody bad-tempered. 
 
 People looked out the first thing in the morning 
 to see if it was still raining. It was always raining! 
 
 M. Gaston Mecoeur, a clerk living in the Condoles 
 quarter, set forth from his little house in the avenue 
 Pompadour, frowning and pushing his umbrella into 
 a head wind. He was going to the station to catch 
 his regular train, the seven-twenty-three, which got 
 him to the bank, where he was chief clerk, at eight 
 o'clock. 
 
 He stopped on the bridge, worried by the height 
 and rapidity of the yellow water passing beneath him; 
 it had just begun to wet the stacks of bricks on the 
 river bank, which was low at this point. Then a gust 
 of wind blew the rain down his neck, and he com- 
 plained bitterly to M. Lortieux, who went by the same 
 train, his train, to work at the cravat counter in the 
 Galeries Saint-Michel. 
 
 71
 
 72 PEOPLE 
 
 " Yes," said M. Lortieux, " it is coming down! We 
 didn't think the Seine would overflow, did we? But 
 here it is. Some water! Those coal stacks will soon 
 be in the soup, and it'll be tough going for the fellows 
 who have empty cellars, believe me! " 
 
 An old man began to tell what he remembered: 
 
 " In '76 the whole quarter was under water, but at 
 that time the avenue Pompadour was only a country 
 road. Now there are three thousand people here! If 
 it should happen again! ..." 
 
 Most of the clerks shrugged their shoulders, be- 
 cause in their modern minds there was no room for 
 the fear of impending tragedy. They were concerned 
 with things of regular occurrence, like cravats and 
 figures. 
 
 In the third-class compartments, separated only by 
 the backs of the benches, there was always someone 
 standing at the door watching the water, which came 
 up close to the track and flooded the lilac nurseries. 
 
 A young man was reading aloud from a newspaper. 
 His two friends listened; one, however, was barely 
 awake, and snored a little when he breathed. An old 
 clerk from the post office, who was wearing an 
 academic decoration, became vexed at the unaccus- 
 tomed noise, and lowered his paper to glower in silent 
 rage at the cause of his annoyance. 
 
 "... Yesterday morning in Paris the water 
 reached 4.62 metres at the Pont des Tournelles and
 
 THE SEINE RISES 73 
 
 5.76 metres at the Pont-Royal. During the day the 
 level went up very regularly at the rate of eight cen- 
 timetres an hour. A rise of at least a metre must be 
 expected in Paris to-day, probably 1.25 metres, per- 
 haps 1.50 metres" 
 
 The train pulled into the station, and from all the 
 doors, simultaneously thrown open, the suburbanites 
 stepped down from the foot-board to the platform with 
 the agility of long habit. They met again in the eve- 
 ning, to catch the seven-eleven, with their collars 
 darkened by a day's wear; otherwise they looked as 
 fresh as in the morning, since their work was clean 
 and sedentary. There were only a few factory 
 hands among them, for in order to live in the sub- 
 urbs it was essential to have steady jobs the year 
 round. 
 
 M. Mecoeur, M. Lortieux, and two of their friends, 
 who lived in Choisy, played cards on the way home, 
 and some millinery girls, about sixteen years old, were 
 retailing work-room gossip, gesturing rapidly with 
 their wan little hands. 
 
 On the Choisy bridge, some people leaned over the 
 railing to watch the bridge piers cleaving the rushing 
 water, and their exclamations agitated the passengers 
 who lived in the Condoles quarter. 
 
 "The town crier says you must leave your 
 houses! " 
 
 M. Mecoeur, startled by this extraordinary injunc-
 
 74 PEOPLE 
 
 tion, delivered himself: "A fat chance! Danger, 
 hell! " 
 
 Five hundred metres further along, the water, flow- 
 ing over the lumber yards on the river banks, had 
 advanced as far as the Villeneuve line. Once it had 
 passed this slight ridge, the inundation of the whole 
 quarter would follow, and this took place at one 
 o'clock in the morning. People were awakened by 
 the noise of the cascade into their cellars, and they 
 hurried to the windows to call to their neighbours. It 
 was still raining persistently. A man passed down the 
 street, running through the water with slow, awkward 
 steps, and the lights that began to shine from the 
 windows were reflected in the street. 
 
 Panic took possession of those who were unable to 
 escape; the mere act of running somewhere would 
 have been such a relief. 
 
 At about three o'clock, two men came down the 
 street pushing a shallow boat with a gaff. They 
 passed along from lamp to lamp, where the water was 
 deepest. A clerk's wife, leaning from the window of 
 her house, which had only a ground floor, recognized 
 Joseph Bois, a barrel-maker, who was known for his 
 strength and for being King of the Choisy Water 
 Sports for the last two years, and with him she saw 
 Charlet, the mover. 
 
 In a doleful voice she begged, " Come get us, the 
 water's above the floor! "
 
 THE SEINE RISES 75 
 
 The clerk brought out an armful of bedding, walk- 
 ing tiptoe, so as to keep his hairy legs as much out 
 of the water as possible, and at the gutter he went in 
 up to his knees. Shaking with fear, he went back 
 for another load, but when he returned Joseph Bois 
 had to tell him, " She won't hold any more, me boy; 1 
 we'll have to come back." 
 
 Then M. Jolimetz, the wood-merchant, sent his 
 powerful dray-horses splashing down the street, with 
 trucks which his men drove up close to the houses 
 where conveyance was requested. After three rounds 
 they came back empty; the daylight had reassured 
 everybody, the people stayed where they were, or 
 simply went upstairs to their neighbours above. The 
 six policemen of Choisy built a big bonfire at the 
 edge of the water, and when the men had warmed 
 themselves they said it was only a wave. 
 
 The lamp-lighter, who came to turn off the gas, 
 leaned upon his bamboo stick, to watch the lamps 
 gleaming beyond his reach, and to fret because he 
 could not complete his round. 
 
 At five o'clock the Mayor arrived; he was enveloped 
 in an old yellow overcoat, and his face bore an ex- 
 pression of great annoyance. He was afraid of getting 
 wet, and no longer felt the necessity of distinguishing 
 himself, since he had been a knight of the Legion of 
 Honour for two years. 
 
 The many factory hands who lived in the flooded
 
 76 PEOPLE 
 
 quarter were transported to their work by means of 
 boats and trucks. An anxious crockery worker asked: 
 " Who's going to bring food to the women? " 
 
 The Mayor did not disclose any plan. "They'll 
 be looked after." 
 
 As soon as the clerks bound for the city were 
 landed, their habitual fear of missing the seven-twenty- 
 three sent them running off in the direction of the 
 station. But it was thirty minutes late, because the 
 softened road-bed had made slow driving necessary. 
 The result was that the passengers for the next one 
 took it too, and they all had to stand up in compart- 
 ments already filled with commuters from further up 
 the line, who were busily telling each other their 
 night's adventures. One young fellow, with his eyes 
 shining from sleeplessness, kept repeating in a tired 
 voice: "We've been rescuing people I We've been 
 rescuing ..." 
 
 His mouth was close to the faces around him, and 
 his breath, heavy with cognac and coffee, caused peo- 
 ple to stand as far away from him as they could: 
 " That ninny of a fireman's trumpeter stood just out 
 of the gravy, and blew his pretty little tune, instead 
 of getting into it and helping us fellows." 
 
 M. Gaston Mecoeur was asleep, with his necktie all 
 crumpled, next to a woman who was sympathizing 
 with the parents of a baby with measles. In the mid- 
 dle of the night they had had to take it out, wrapped
 
 THE SEINE RISES 77 
 
 in its bedclothes: "Such a cute little thing! And 
 getting along so well, too. A cold on top of measles 
 will be the end of it." 
 
 Other people, oblivious to the chattering, were 
 buried in illustrated papers, that showed photographs 
 taken at the worst places. At the Paris stations, where 
 the trains were either late or did not run at all, porters 
 wandered idly up and down the platforms, while the 
 station masters hurried hither and thither, in their 
 attempt to reinstate the tangled schedule. Commuters 
 read, with dismay, the company's notice, saying that 
 it was absolutely unable to guarantee their return trip 
 in the evening. However, the evening trains did run, 
 but at a snail's pace. The water flooded the Choisy 
 station, entirely covering the tracks. 
 
 At noon the Condoles people were famished, and 
 began to fire off guns and revolvers to announce the 
 fact. The Mayor had organized no assistance for 
 them, and the hope that the water would go down de- 
 layed efficient methods of feeding, which would have 
 been rendered indispensable by the knowledge that the 
 thing was going to last. And it did last. The police- 
 men moved their bonfire back before the persistently 
 advancing water, which reflected the unlucky houses. 
 A crowd of onlookers obstructed the embarkation of 
 food supplies. 
 
 The water's edge divided people into two classes: 
 those for whom the flood was an affliction, and those
 
 78 PEOPLE 
 
 for whom it was a sight not to be missed. A young 
 lady arrived in her motor, and was furious at being 
 unable to take a good photograph. 
 
 Yarns were told without the slightest foundation, 
 but which might have happened: there were babies 
 over there in the houses, one didn't know just where, 
 who had no milk and no fires to warm them; there 
 were people who had eaten nothing since the day 
 before. 
 
 Three men lifted an old man, who was paralysed, 
 from a boat where he had been propped up in an old 
 chair by two dirty cushions. He couldn't move his 
 head, and he rolled his eyes piteously in order to find 
 out what was to become of him. M. Courtois, the 
 commissary, spoke up a little too loudly: " I'll take 
 him to my house." Then he took his place as if in 
 a procession, in front of the chair they were carrying. 
 
 A great deal of hospitality, without such fine atti- 
 tudes, was offered to the flood victims with their 
 bundles of clothes, their canaries, and their wet 
 cats. 
 
 Dogs came running to the water's edge, plunged in, 
 and then turned back to bark towards their inacces- 
 sible homes. 
 
 When the arrogant hospitality of M. Courtois and 
 his like, and that of the less pretentious people, had 
 been made use of, the victims found at their dis- 
 posal the assistance of the shop-keepers, whose busi-
 
 THE SEINE RISES 79 
 
 ness sense prompted them to take this means of add- 
 ing to their reputation with the public. 
 
 The Mayor was pleased with the general initiative, 
 which supplemented his own, and he complimented the 
 community: " Not a victim left in the streets! " 
 
 " It'll be all very well for a few days," said M. 
 Verdier, an old miser. " At this moment people are 
 a little blind. They'll regret their hospitality later." 
 
 The Mayor became angry at this anticipation of a 
 return to egoism: " It'll last as long as the flood, and 
 the flood isn't going to last." 
 
 In the afternoon, a platoon of dragoons arrived and, 
 having dismounted, took up their positions as sentries 
 at the water's edge. No one had told them how to 
 make themselves useful, and they had had hardly any 
 experience. Notices were posted, saying that the 
 Seine would rise forty centimetres during the night. A 
 bargeman tied a piece of wire around one of the 
 lamp-posts, at a point fifty centimetres above the 
 existing level, and stuck some stakes into the ground, 
 at the edge of the water, to verify the rise there. The 
 time for optimistic prophecies had passed; people 
 wanted to know the exact facts. 
 
 At seven-thirty that evening, the clerks, returned 
 from Paris, wanted boats to take them to their houses. 
 M. Mecoeur, hoarse from too much talking about the 
 flood, was completely fagged out, and wished to waste 
 no time in getting to bed. Some were terrified at the
 
 8o PEOPLE 
 
 predicted rise and hesitated; the sight of people leav- 
 ing the quarter unsettled the minds of those who 
 were waiting to enter it. But habit was stronger than 
 fear. 
 
 A truck came splashing through to dry land, and 
 the dragoons helped out four women, each with a 
 baby. The onlookers came running to the spot: 
 
 " How old is he? " 
 
 "Ah, it's a little girl! " 
 
 " Have you got a change for her? " 
 
 Little blue ribbons, on lace caps, moved about, at 
 one end of the white shawl bundles. Anxious, but not 
 desperate, these victims proceeded towards the houses 
 of their friends, with their babies held warmly in a 
 careful embrace. The soldiers collected floating pieces 
 of wood, to keep the fires going. Night came again, 
 increasing the inertia of the tired and soaking men. 
 M. Mecoeur succeeded in getting himself into one of 
 the boats, just ahead of a workman carrying a bottle 
 of milk and a four-pound loaf of bread. He jumped 
 in just as the bargeman pushed off, saying, " If you 
 want food you've got to get it yourself or starve." 
 
 "They've sent out dragoons," said the bargeman, 
 " and look at 'em there standing like pickets. What 
 we want is a lot of young fellows who know how to 
 run a boat." 
 
 The flooded streets were as silent as an empty 
 church, and the velvety water reflected the lamps that
 
 THE SEINE RISES 81 
 
 shone from the windows. No gas reached the houses, 
 or the street lamps, for the mains were full of water. 
 And it was as though the night had sternly com- 
 manded silence. 
 
 " This is my door," said M. Mecoeur in a low voice, 
 and the only way he could enter it was by means of 
 a plank laid upon two weighted barrels. In the sec- 
 ond-floor back room six children were sleeping on 
 piles of bedclothes, and in the front room five women 
 were telling each other things that had been repeated 
 many times. Mme. Mecoeur wept at the arrival of 
 her husband, and one of the other women, with the 
 alert suspicion of the rest of her sex, remarked: 
 " You're all right now, because you've got your man." 
 
 M. Mecoeur wanted to go back and warn the others, 
 who were doubtless waiting at the edge of the water, 
 and he went to the window to watch for a boat. The 
 silence of a bottomless abyss was upon the motionless 
 waters. It was strange to hear no sound of trains or 
 wagons, and the stillness was almost audible. A boat 
 passed behind the row of trees on the other side of 
 the street, and M. Mecoeur called out. No reply came 
 from the two men who were in it; they were speaking 
 together in low voices. You could hear the splash of 
 their gaffs, as they glided out of sight into the deep 
 shadows of the houses. 
 
 " There's somebody at Libercier's," said one of the 
 women. " I see a light."
 
 82 PEOPLE 
 
 One of her companions said it wasn't possible. 
 " They're with his wife's people at Versailles! " Then 
 the truth came to her. " It's thieves in the house, 
 then! " 
 
 M. Mecoeur went to get his revolver, and the 
 women put their hands to their ears and begged: 
 " Don't, you'll wake the kiddies." Then other boats 
 glided past in the direction of the abandoned houses. 
 
 At five o'clock in the" morning M. Mecoeur went 
 downstairs to see if the water had gone down. It 
 had covered two and a half more steps, and the plank 
 by which he had entered the night before was floating 
 about in the flooded room. The women were filled 
 with horror by the revelations of the dawn. Joseph 
 Bois came by, pushing a large boat with four people 
 in it, and M. Mecoeur got in, and began to tell about 
 the pirates of the night before. 
 
 " Oh, they're everywhere," said Joseph Bois, " and' 
 the first one I catch is going to get his dome smashed 
 in with this oar." 
 
 The daylight brought many women, who had been 
 sleeping in safe districts, to the water's edge to look 
 at their abandoned homes, and they loudly lamented 
 thlTfact that the water had arisen about eight inches 
 above the wire tied around the lamp-post the day 
 before. All the people who could not get to Paris 
 had collected around the station, where the tracks 
 were more than three feet under water. Everything
 
 THE SEINE RISES 83 
 
 on wheels had been hitched up, and the trip to Paris 
 cost one franc. Some set out on bicycles, in spite of 
 the muddy roads, and one heroic person proposed to 
 walk the eight kilometres. The commuters, accus- 
 tomed to fourteen minutes in the train, declared: 
 " You're daffy! " And they fixed it up with the sta- 
 tion master to let them take one of the circle trains, 
 leaving in three-quarters of an hour, which would get 
 them to Paris in two hours. It was much slower than 
 walking time, but they would at least be sitting down. 
 
 M. Mecoeur, and a good many other clerks, decided 
 not to go at all, for they hoped this would be their 
 only day away from the office. The next day no 
 trains ran at all. Never had such a thing happened 
 before! It couldn't last! 
 
 The newspapers published exact accounts of what 
 had already happened, and made grave predictions: 
 
 " Yesterday the main sewer of Clichy burst. . . . 
 The Gare Saint-Lazare may be flooded to-day, and 
 there is a still graver possibility: Crevices have been 
 noticed in the Auteuil Viaduct, and it is feared that 
 this structure may fall, thus forming a dangerous bar- 
 rier which will throw the Seine back upon Paris." 
 
 The Mayor's indecision gave way rapidly to uncon- 
 sidered authority. No one saw him now; from his 
 office came an order for the immediate evacuation of 
 the Condoles quarter. The Chief of Police explained 
 to the people why this was necessary:
 
 84 PEOPLE 
 
 " When there is nobody there, there won't be any 
 theft. No admittance! Anyone trying to prowl 
 around there in a boat, as sure as I'm talking to ye, 
 will get all that's coming to him." 
 
 Boats, manned by policemen, called at every door, 
 and the order: " Everyone out! " was explained to the 
 inhabitants good-humouredly, except to those who 
 made a fuss, like Charlet, the mover, who told the 
 policemen to run along and mind their business. The 
 Chief declared: " He wants to stay and make a haul. 
 Look through his pockets." 
 
 Thirty sous were found, and some bread-crumbs and 
 an empty cigarette box. " You didn't search me yes- 
 terday when men were needed to help the victims," 
 said Charlet. " I kept my boat going for thirty-six 
 hours without stopping. ..." Then this advice 
 came from the Chief: 
 
 "Shut your mouth! You've only got to do the 
 same as the rest of 'em." 
 
 When Charlet was landed, he took off his cap and 
 addressed his exasperated companions: 
 
 "Look at me! If any one of ye can say I ever 
 stole a sou, let 'im say it! They searched me; they 
 kicked me out of my house. And after I've been 
 helpin' people for two days. Look me over. I'm 
 Charlet the mover." 
 
 He turned a haggard face to each of his listeners;
 
 THE SEINE RISES 85 
 
 for the last forty-eight hours he had scarcely eaten, 
 washed, or slept. 
 
 M. Mecoeur had a big package under his arm. He 
 wore a silk handkerchief around his neck instead of a 
 collar, and stated his objection precisely. " The water 
 can rise fifteen steps before reaching us on the second 
 floor. You might leave us in peace. ..." 
 
 "There'll be room for everybody," replied the 
 Chief roughly. " You'll have everything you want. 
 Get along to the Convent of Thiais. And step lively! " 
 
 Some workers from a charitable society were mak- 
 ing soup for the women and children who flocked 
 there. The men and a few women stayed to watch 
 the slow arrival of the boats, loaded with ejected 
 families. 
 
 When Charlet stopped speaking, a navvy, who had 
 been listening to him with bent head and broad shoul- 
 ders raised to the level of his ears, denoting deep 
 thought, delivered himself: 
 
 "When you ain't good enough to be Mayor, you 
 don't let yourself be nominated. This is all his fault. 
 He done nothin' to help these folks. And now he's 
 fired 'em out of their houses." 
 
 At the end of each phrase, he turned abruptly away 
 from his approving auditors, and walked off a little, 
 with his hands dug into the pockets of his voluminous 
 corduroys; then after four steps he came back to 
 begin a fresh one.
 
 86 PEOPLE 
 
 " How about Ivry? The Mayor there was into the 
 water up to his neck. He made the bridge builders 
 get busy. Here, we got two dozen dragoons who can't 
 do nothin' but watch the water risin'." 
 
 M. Mecoeur also held forth to a sympathetic audi- 
 ence: 
 
 "What an administration! A hundred and fifty- 
 eight francs in taxes, and I get thrown out of my 
 house by the police! " 
 
 He voiced the usual complaint of his class; from 
 his narrow point of view, it was enough to be orderly 
 and industrious. 
 
 People started to tell the scandalous things they 
 knew about the Mayor. 
 
 Some members of the Town Council were complain- 
 ing at the consolidation of all the relief committees, 
 according to the crier's announcement: 
 
 " The clergy have put it over on us this time! 
 Here we are, forced to work with them, if I may 
 say that much to their credit. They'll say they did 
 it all, and they'll get decorated." 
 
 Before noon the Mayor walked past the muttering 
 populace with his nose in the air. Ducq, an employee 
 of the Gas Company, tried to engage him in conver- 
 sation: 
 
 " What's it to you if I stay in my house? And 
 s'pose I want to croak there? I'm a free man, ain't 
 I? . ."
 
 THE SEINE RISES 87 
 
 The Chief of Police came running up, puffing with 
 exhaustion, and took Ducq by the arms: " It's you 
 for the lock-up! " 
 
 Ducq collapsed: " I'm all right. I ain't savin' any- 
 thing." He was very miserable, because for two years 
 he had gotten up at three o'clock in the morning, and, 
 from then until seven, when he went off to his work, 
 he had built the walls of his little house, brick by 
 brick, on a piece of ground that had cost him three 
 francs a metre. He had spent the savings of his whole 
 life on it, and now it was gone. He was forty-three, 
 and could never build it again. 
 
 People were so tired and wet that they didn't have 
 the strength to match their outraged feelings with ac- 
 tions. The navvy predicted that the people would 
 avenge themselves, nevertheless: 
 
 " If it ain't better to-morrow, we'll break things 
 up. There won't be any window panes in the 
 Mayor's office! No more toastin' their toes for 
 them." 
 
 Famine became imminent. Half the bakehouses 
 were flooded and produced no bread. The bakers 
 who could still carry on business were running short 
 of flour. 
 
 " Come on, boys; move along," said the policemen; 
 " all this yelling won't make the water go down! It's 
 gone up twenty centimetres already this morning." 
 
 Charlet objected:
 
 88 PEOPLE 
 
 " It ain't true; you're only sayin' that to make us 
 think you done right to put us out of our houses." 
 
 The dismal water crept resistlessly towards the 
 older part of the quarter, where the inhabitants were 
 not quite so poor. They were astonished to find them- 
 selves just as frightened as their less fortunate neigh- 
 bours, and declared: " It's the end of the world! " 
 
 A freshly posted notice read: "The Seine will rise 
 eighty centimetres during the next twenty-four hours." 
 
 M. Mecoeur no longer had the courage to be a rebel 
 citizen. He discovered that he was only a poor man 
 at the mercy of the eternal Forces. The relentless 
 swelling of the river showed him that anything was 
 possible in life, he might even have to give up going 
 to the Bank. 
 
 The old fear of the anger of God sprang up in the 
 troubled minds of the women. 
 
 The water-line came nearer and nearer to the navvy, 
 Charlet, and Ducq, and they drew back from it, 
 silently. 
 
 At last they knew what resignation was.
 
 AT THE EXPRESS WINDOW 
 
 THE draymen pushed forward to turn in their way- 
 bills: 
 
 " I'm first! " 
 
 "That ain't true! " 
 
 M. Lefevre, whose job was to deliver the receipts, 
 folded his hands, like a parson taking a nap, and 
 watched the handfuls of yellow paper fly past, fanning 
 his face: 
 
 " Keep yer line! Then you'll know who's first, and 
 who's last. You guys is like a swarm o' flies on a 
 lump o' sugar. Don't muss everything up like that! " 
 
 The men nearest the window grunted their replies, 
 but others behind them put their complaints into 
 words: 
 
 " Every time we has to wait longer! " 
 
 " I'll get me horses pinched, waitin' like this! And 
 it won't be the first time either! " 
 
 " Why didn't you bring 'em in with you? " advised 
 M. Lefevre. He watched these noisy people, bristling 
 with gestures, as calmly as he would have watched a 
 beautiful sunset, then he spoke to them pleasantly: 
 
 "I'd like to see you boys in my job: 166 francs 
 66 centimes a month, to sit here and get sworn at, ten 
 
 89
 
 go PEOPLE 
 
 hours a day. When you fellas gets fed up with yer 
 job, you can take it out on yer horses. I ain't got 
 no horse. D'ye get me? " 
 
 A drayman from one of the big stores, who was 
 wearing a more elegant cap than the employees of the 
 Company, refused to get him: 
 
 "Who gives a god damn about that? We'll buy 
 you a drink, only get busy! " 
 
 M. Lefevre felt the same way about it: 
 
 " No one wants to more than me, but how the hell 
 can I do my job when yer throwin' the papers in my 
 face? My nose don't need blowin'. Come on. Who's 
 first? You don't know. Me either. Watch yer 
 hands! " He let the window fall and laughed at the 
 uproar. 
 
 His young assistant, bending over some writing in 
 the corner of the office, timidly watched this man who 
 was capable of such determination. M. Lefevre skil- 
 fully rolled a cigarette, and held it out to him: 
 "Lick it." 
 
 The young man ran his tongue along the paper, first 
 to the right and then to the left. Then M. Lefevre 
 demonstrated his method, which was to hold his 
 tongue still, and pass the paper along it with one 
 movement. 
 
 " You slobber too much. But you got time to learn 
 the makin' of cigarettes between now and twenty-one 
 years of workin' like me. I was station master once,
 
 AT THE EXPRESS WINDOW t 91 
 
 but I got it in the neck, and here I am behind this 
 window. Every time they lower my pitch, or when- 
 ever guys like those out there want to beat me up, 
 first thing I do is light a cigarette. Want a light. 
 . . . Don't mention it." 
 
 " What's that, rain? " He heard a fresh uproar 
 outside. 
 
 The voice of one of the draymen provided the 
 explanation: "The Company'll wipe it up. If I gets 
 out o' line, I loses my turn." 
 
 M. Lefevre pacified his assistant: 
 
 " Keep your shirt on; they ain't goin' to do it in 
 here. I used to get angry too, but now it's always 
 me for the easiest way. Sit down! " 
 
 He lifted the window: " Who's first? Oh, you're in 
 line now. Good work! Way-bills, please. Acknowl- 
 edged, are they? Thanks." 
 
 He put his cigarette down on a cross-section of 
 track, which he had for a paper-weight, and began to 
 write, while the file of men waited in silent fury: 
 
 " Next." A noise of terrific scuffling came from the 
 other end of the line. 
 
 " Get back, for God's sake! " 
 
 " Ye don't pass me! " 
 
 " What is it, the horses? " asked M. Lefevre. 
 
 A man was struggling to get to the window, but the 
 draymen mastered him, and he now looked as though 
 his one idea was to pick up his cap, which was in a
 
 92 PEOPLE 
 
 puddle on the floor, and get out of the place. But 
 M. Lefevre, curious to know who he was, asked: 
 
 " Explain yourself, please. Something to send off? " 
 
 The man put his hat on the ledge by the window, 
 and began to speak at the top of his voice, but with 
 great difficulty, for he was a foreigner: 
 
 " It is what a friend to me, he send off. He go with 
 my furniture and much my money." 
 
 M. Lefevre took up his cigarette again: " May I 
 smoke? " 
 
 The man, oblivious of everything but what he had 
 to say, exclaimed: 
 
 "Yes. . . . Yes. I must to stop him the friend 
 to me! " 
 
 M. Lefevre tried to silence the draymen: 
 
 " Keep quiet, can't you? . . .1 ain't yellin', am 
 I? He ain't takin' anybody's turn, he's only askin' 
 a question." Then he answered the bewildered 
 man: 
 
 " Nice friends you've got! It ain't the Police here, 
 it's the Railroad. If you ain't got nothing to send 
 off, then what the hell do I care for all that stuff yer 
 talkin' about? " 
 
 The draymen roared: "Put 'im out! " 
 
 M. Lefevre congratulated them: 
 
 "Ye'll get credit for this. . . . Fire 'im out. 
 ... A guy comin' in and mussin' everything up 
 like thatl "
 
 AT THE EXPRESS WINDOW 93 
 
 There was complete disorder in the file, but the 
 wrangling began all over again. 
 
 " My turn." 
 
 " That's a damn lie! " 
 
 " I'll get busy again when ye're in line, not before." 
 And behind the ground-glass window, which was thick 
 enough to withstand the hammerings of angry fists, 
 M. Lefevre spoke words of wisdom to his assistant: 
 
 " The Company shoves us from behind, and these 
 fellas comes at us from the front. To hold down a 
 job like this, you mustn't have any guts at all. Try 
 to stand up to it, and you'll bust in two. Take it 
 easy whatever happens. Those guys never get what 
 we're drivin' at, but we got to keep on learnin' 'em 
 what to do. What wouldn't I give to be sittin' with 
 a new cap on my head, behind a nice window with lots 
 of brass that was polished every mornin', and to open 
 it just to say:" (he lifted the window) ". . . ! " 
 
 " Eat it! " replied the man who was standing there.
 
 AT THE CHEVALIER RESTAURANT 
 
 Ax the Chevalier Restaurant men with muddy feet 
 called down the basement windows: "The box!" 
 Two scullions, with dish-cloths around their necks, 
 appeared, and lifted it according to their daily habit 
 on to the wheel of the garbage wagon. The early 
 risers of Paris walked briskly down the boulevard, for 
 the crispness of October was in the air; they were 
 hurrying to get to their jobs at seven o'clock. The 
 valuable leavings from the restaurants were being car- 
 ried up from the basements; skimmings and greasy 
 water, worth five francs a barrel, were poured into 
 metal containers on the wagon of the bone-dealer, 
 whose horse was rubbing noses with the placid mare 
 of the Little Sisters of the Poor. These nuns, in their 
 black robes and hoods that swelled out as they went 
 rapidly about their business, received crusts of bread, 
 coffee grounds, and the little bits of meat left on the 
 clients' plates. The proprietor's reputation for benev- 
 olence was further enhanced by a daily queue of hun- 
 gry souls, amongst whom the waiters distributed 
 scraps. 
 
 They waited quietly in the empty restaurant, with 
 
 94
 
 AT THE CHEVALIER RESTAURANT 95 
 
 its mirrors and white cloths laid for the next meal, the 
 remains of which would be theirs. A woman, weary 
 with carrying her baby, stood in the line, and her 
 back was as round as a wet-nurse's bosom. 
 
 The two scullions started off to get their allowance 
 of white wine, as cold as the morning itself, but they 
 were stopped by two young men, who laid hands on 
 their shoulders, and replied to the friendly good-morn- 
 ings in a strong Auvergne accent: 
 
 " We're flat broke, and not a smell of a job! " 
 
 The two scullions got out drinks for the two jobless 
 cooks. The humility of poverty caused these men to 
 forget the difference between their callings, and the 
 cooks were glad to discuss with the scullions the very 
 absorbing question of where to get work. They com- 
 plained of the great number of unemployed, and of 
 the difficulty of getting placed after returning from 
 summer jobs: 
 
 " There's a lot of misery in the winter in Paris." 
 
 " A steady job's a lot better than workin' by the 
 season," declared one of the scullions. 
 
 Baugalois, called Steel-Shavings because of his curly 
 hair, made some reservations: 
 
 " By the year, you don't have to worry, but the 
 pay's bad. At Maire's the chefs get two hundred 
 francs a month; the assistants, seventy to eighty. At 
 Ledoyen's, the chefs three hundred; the assistants, 
 ninety to a hundred. I'm just back from Trouville,
 
 96 PEOPLE 
 
 assistant sauce-maker, two hundred, laundry and fare 
 paid." 
 
 Jandet held forth, with a Gascon accent: 
 
 " If you travel you learn yer job better. Ouvrard's 
 sauce-makers, now, what can them guys turn out? 
 Filets of sole with mussels and shrimps: the dish of 
 the house. Got to keep movin' or you'll get stale." 
 
 The two scullions, who washed dishes, disapproved 
 of these high-sounding arguments: 
 
 " Ye're always splittin' yer guts, if you work by the 
 season. You don't get no rest at all." 
 
 Jandet put in sarcastically: 
 
 "And I s'pose there ain't no place like that in 
 Paris? " 
 
 The oldest of the scullions informed them: 
 
 " There's two jobs goin' here. An entremets-cook 
 and a larder-man near scratched each other's eyes out 
 yesterday. I guess they've got the sack by this 
 time." 
 
 Baugalois and Jandet finished their wine, and hav- 
 ing thanked the scullion for this information, they 
 set off on their round again. Their dragging steps 
 betrayed the fact that they were out of work, and 
 their faces, pale from constant proximity to the fire, 
 distinguished them from other workmen who passed 
 their days in cool work-rooms. The stream of busy 
 people flowed past them. 
 
 A slow procession of fruit-carts filled the Marche
 
 AT THE CHEVALIER RESTAURANT 97 
 
 Saint-Honore, as they entered the Benefit Society of 
 their Association, where there was an employment 
 office. The odour that clung to the clothes of these 
 men, waiting near the door of the office, proclaimed 
 their occupation; it was the same odour that rises 
 from the basement windows of a restaurant. The 
 summer season had just come to an end, and Paris, 
 the great centre of employment, was full of these 
 men. 
 
 The chance of a day's work as extra help, especially 
 on Sunday when people generally dine at restaurants, 
 enabled them to wait patiently near the office. The 
 pay for a chef was ten francs, for an assistant, five, 
 food included; and those who did not come in for 
 these little windfalls got angry with the manager and 
 accused him of favouritism, but never to his face, even 
 though they had paid their Association fee of three 
 francs regularly every month. 
 
 There are few revolutionary spirits amongst the 
 members of these associations; permanent distress 
 only occurs in the case of old men, who have been 
 given the sack on account of their age. The young 
 ones, devoted to their work and the earning of their 
 living, have the ambition to be chefs one day, and 
 they look forward to the possibility of a little income 
 at the age of forty-five. 
 
 The minds of many are absorbed by the search for 
 a nice place in a private house, where the work is easy
 
 98 PEOPLE 
 
 and brings them peace and quiet. Men who require 
 more excitement stay in the restaurants, and feed their 
 temperaments upon the noise and bustle which is im- 
 possible for a private servant. These men know what 
 it is to be hungry. 
 
 Accents from every part of France can be detected 
 in the speech of these wanderers, but the " merde 
 dors" of the department of the Seine is heard most 
 often. Men arrive from abroad, linguists now by 
 virtue of " thank you " or " grazie." Weighed down 
 by the future's uncertainty, they wait patiently, with 
 their cold feet in shoes that cannot shine because they 
 are covered with grease. 
 
 Most jobs were fixed up in the bars. Rather than 
 trust to the manager of the Association, the chefs 
 chose their own assistants. At the marble-topped 
 tables, cards were played and white wine was drunk 
 until ten o'clock, then aperitifs until noon, in order 
 to keep in the good graces of the proprietor, who soon 
 greeted M. Montchanin with a cordial hand-shake. 
 M. Montchanin was chef at Chevalier's, at a salary 
 of eight hundred francs a month, and he and the 
 proprietor of the bar came from the same province. 
 This latter gentleman, whose stomach had too long 
 been the prey of " What'll you have? ", was very 
 anxious to please Baugalois and Jandet, who were sit- 
 ting at a table near the door, lettered: WINES 
 LIQUEURS, for there were nineteen white wines, six
 
 AT THE CHEVALIER RESTAURANT 99 
 
 absinths, and eleven black currant cordials chalked up 
 against them. 
 
 He advised M. Montchanin to engage them, to re- 
 place the two he had sacked with a week's pay the 
 day before. 
 
 " Two good little fellas; quiet and never thirsty. 
 White wine in the morning, aperitif at noon, then 
 coffee and a few glasses of beer. Never get loaded." 
 
 M. Montchanin looked at their certificates, and said 
 he would take them at ninety francs a month, Bau- 
 galois as entremets-cook, Jandet as larder-man. The 
 proprietor wished them good luck at the chef's ex- 
 pense: 
 
 " What'll you have? " 
 
 From the cupboard they got their bundles, which 
 looked like galantines: white jacket, slippers, and 
 knives; and they started out briskly towards Cheva- 
 lier's. 
 
 To other young men who came to drink white wine 
 there, the proprietor offered encouragement: 
 
 " It'll be your turn soon." 
 
 Someone congratulated them on having missed the 
 Chevalier job: 
 
 " Oh, that hole! Boiled beef every day, and not 
 enough o' that to fill yer gut." 
 
 M. Montchanin had been decorated by the Agricul- 
 tural Society for his interest in the yearly Culinary 
 Exhibition. His weakness for honours of this sort had
 
 ioo PEOPLE 
 
 now plunged him into the engrossing management of 
 'a Benefit Society. Other dignitaries of the Associa- 
 tion got as far as the Legion of Honour, when they 
 became rich and could get what they wanted. 
 
 Baugalois and Jandet went down into the kitchen 
 of the Chevalier Restaurant. Men in white jackets 
 were busy around the stoves and the heavy wooden 
 tables, preparing for the midday meal. An assistant 
 larder-man brought twelve chickens to the roaster, 
 perspiring before his spit, then he showed the two new 
 arrivals where to put their things: a tiny windowless 
 room lit by electricity. The smell of cooking, confined 
 in this place, was so strong that even those accustomed 
 to it had difficulty in breathing. 
 
 Baugalois and Jandet put on their jackets and caps, 
 grasped their knives, and moved silently across the 
 sawdust-covered floor in slippered feet: Baugalois to 
 his stove, and Jandet to the refrigerator room. 
 
 The head entremets-cook threw some beans into 
 boiling water to bleach, shook hands with his new 
 first assistant, and gave him a clean apron and two 
 clean dish-cloths; these articles would be supplied to 
 him every Thursday and Sunday. 
 
 Baugalois looked spotlessly clean beside the second 
 assistant, whose apron was black with three days' 
 use. While wiping off the table with a damp cloth, 
 he explained to the newcomer how to lay the things 
 out: where to put the spice-box, the string basket, and
 
 AT THE CHEVALIER RESTAURANT 101 
 
 at which corner of the stove to place the steamer for 
 soups. Then he began to pull his leg: 
 
 " Know how to make an omlette in a salad-basket? " 
 
 Baugalois was afraid that his ability would not dis- 
 play itself immediately in this new place, and that he 
 might hear that terrifying phrase: 
 
 " Is there anything you can do? " 
 
 The howler who received the orders from upstairs 
 yelled: 
 
 " Un maquereau a la Bom de Castellane! " 
 
 The sauce-man answered for the first courses, and 
 the roaster for the roasts, the grills, and the fries. 
 The heaviest burden fell upon these men in the base- 
 ments at meal hours, for it was then that the fires 
 were hottest. The red surface of the stoves produced 
 a terrific heat, and the stifled cooks poured _with per- 
 spiration, but their agility was astonishing. Little dry 
 clouds of sawdust followed their rapid footsteps. 
 Each one kept his temper until someone bumped into 
 him, and then the oaths broke forth with force and 
 promptness. 
 
 The howler yelled to the entremets-cook: " Mush 
 for the dog! " 
 
 " Oh, hell; I forgot the brute! " was the angry re- 
 sponse. 
 
 The second assistant darted after a brass casserole, 
 and plunked it down on the stove; into it he put the 
 soft part of a loaf of bread and some consomme, and
 
 102 PEOPLE 
 
 then, with a swift movement, forked out the bread and 
 brought the consomme to a boil. 
 
 The head entremets-cook, rapidly buttering some 
 vegetables, explained to Baugalois: 
 
 " Every day at noon: a panada with consomme and 
 chopped meat. The brute belongs to a harlot. First- 
 class references! " 
 
 He shouted to the larder-man: 
 
 " Meat for the dog! " And Jandet emerged briskly 
 from the cool room, where one's cheeks stayed pink. 
 
 The howler grumbled: 
 
 " Go get your mush, my pet! " Then he told 
 Baugalois: 
 
 " Here's a customer to look after. A hundred sous 
 a day for a dog! No bones and chopped very fine! 
 No grease! " 
 
 Baugalois accomplished this little job easily, but he 
 whispered his indignation to the second assistant: 
 
 " It's a damn shame! I've been starving for two 
 months; there's been plenty o' days when I didn't eat 
 nothin'. A hundred sous for a brute of a dog, and I 
 know lots o' guys who ain't got fifteen." 
 
 The second assistant agreed heartily: 
 
 " We gets boiled beef, and that brute laps up the 
 broth." 
 
 Clearing his throat with a cough, he spat copiously 
 into the casserole: 
 
 " Eat that. There ain't no bones in it! "
 
 AT THE CHEVALIER RESTAURANT 103 
 
 Baugalois lessened his indignation by contributing 
 in a similarly outrageous manner to the nourishment 
 of the pampered animal. Thus their injured sense of 
 justice was avenged.
 
 FAT-MONTH 
 
 THE oven-man at Nicollet's confectionery shop had 
 been taken on at fifty francs a month in spite of the 
 fact that he was only twenty-six. The apprentices 
 called him Fat-Month. He was a good worker, and 
 caught on to his job very quickly; then he made a 
 totally different arrangement of the utensils in the 
 bakehouse, according to his own ideas: the baking 
 tins near the door, in order to save the steps of those 
 who came to get them. The flour-man, who had been 
 with Nicollet for fifteen years, protested against all 
 these changes: 
 
 "This is what ye might call a revolution! Every- 
 thing was all right before that devil came! " And 
 he left the pie-dishes in a heap near their old place. 
 Fat-Month picked them up, and piled them, between 
 some puff-paste ready for rolling out and a lump of 
 brioche dough, on the marble rolling slab. Then he 
 went back to the bakehouse and complained to 
 Henri, his apprentice, whom they called Joseph be- 
 cause there were already two Henris in the establish- 
 ment: 
 
 " A good workman always tidies up after his work; 
 it's easy to spot the messy ones. They're always for- 
 gettin' somethin'; it's like not bein' house-broke! " 
 
 104
 
 FAT-MONTH 105 
 
 " Not much grub here, is there, old man? " 
 
 " Be quick, Midget, loosen these and jump them 
 out." He was the smallest of all the apprentices, 
 hence this nickname. 
 
 Fat-Month drew a pan of plum cakes out of a slow 
 oven, and the black handle of the oven-shovel missed 
 the opposite wall of the narrow room. Through the 
 one little window, one could see the legs of the people 
 on the pavement, and often the same legs stopped for 
 a long time in front of the shop window; these people 
 would always have the glass between them and the 
 good things like that. Then there were the street 
 children, whose heads could be seen; the smell of cook- 
 ing pastry made their mouths water, and their dirty 
 little hands tightened on the gratings. When there 
 were too many of them, the men in the bakehouse had 
 no light, and it was the custom to soak them with 
 the water-sprinkler, but Fat-Month did away with this 
 procedure. He warned Joseph: 
 
 " If anyone beats you up, Colossus, when I'm not 
 there, give me a call. There's no one but me has the 
 right to do that, and I ain't never done it yet, have I, 
 Little Empty Gut? But if you slop water in the faces 
 of those brats, I'll kick yer tail." 
 
 M. Nicollet, a stocky little man in a white jacket 
 with pearl buttons, shouted on the way down the 
 stairs: 
 
 " Things goin' all right? "
 
 io6 PEOPLE 
 
 Fat-Month unfolded two arms of the gas light to let 
 his boss see the pastry being taken out of the quick 
 oven to be put back into a slow one to develop prop- 
 erly. Contentment was visible upon M. Nicollet's 
 round face, but he spoke with the oven-man as though 
 matters of the most serious nature were under discus- 
 sion. 
 
 Fat-Month was never the man to talk about his old 
 jobs. His past was as much of a secret as those of 
 the other men were common knowledge. With them 
 it was always: 
 
 "When I was with Barbauneux in the Place du 
 Havre . . .", or else: "Don't tell me anything 
 about candy flowers; I used to make 'em at old 
 Pointu's." 
 
 The flour-man scraped the dough from his fingers, 
 and addressed M. Nicollet: 
 
 " Ye're not going to keep that lump o' flesh, are you? 
 Where's he come from? He's always frowning. I 
 likes to work along with guys when I knows what's 
 in their heads. He ain't paid his way in here; we 
 never yet had a drink together! I don't mind tellin' 
 where I was before comin' here! ..." 
 
 " He holds down his job to suit me," said M. 
 Nicollet; he wanted to keep this man, who worked 
 hard for small wages. 
 
 Joseph, thinking to imitate the manner of Fat- 
 Month, started to plague the flour-man's apprentice,
 
 FAT-MONTH 107 
 
 one of the other Henris, who was called Chocolate 
 because of his dark skin. Once Chocolate came stag- 
 gering by with a load of cold baking tins, and shouted, 
 " Hot! " in order to clear the way. Joseph loitered 
 in front of him, but Fat-Month pulled him roughly 
 aside: 
 
 "Don't you know you've got to make room for 
 people carrying things? " 
 
 At the dead season there were only small bakings 
 for the shop, and big orders for private houses were 
 rare. When there was no baking to be done, Fat- 
 Month and Joseph polished the steel fishes on the 
 oven doors with emery paper. Then they burnt up 
 the cockroaches that swarmed behind the pie-dishes. 
 It was a bad year for these, and they often fell into 
 the dough before baking, leaving their almond-shaped 
 imprints upon the cakes when they came out of the 
 oven. Fat-Month asked M. Nicollet to give him some 
 redding for the bricks, but the answer was: "We'll 
 see about that next year." M. Nicollet was making 
 his fortune, sou by sou. 
 
 Fat-Month took out his baking, done to a nicety, 
 then re-brushed the rolls of the day before with the 
 yolk of an egg, and put them in the oven for a mo- 
 ment to give them a crackle. This finished, he sat 
 down to read a pamphlet, but the next moment M. 
 Nicollet, having been promptly notified, appeared on 
 the stairs again:
 
 io8 PEOPLE 
 
 " Well, what about your work? " 
 
 "I ain't got nothing to do but redden the bricks! " 
 
 M. Nicollet's red face, beneath his white cap, be- 
 trayed his anger; he was master of his well-lit store 
 and his dingy basement. He was breathing fast, as 
 though he had been running, but he kept his temper: 
 
 " Buy the redding instead of wasting your sous on 
 books. It'll keep your hand in." 
 
 When there was nothing in the oven, Fat-Month 
 continued his laborious reading. Sometimes it took 
 him a whole day to read a page, for his attention often 
 strayed, and he stared straight in front of him with 
 compressed lips, as motionless as an image. 
 
 The flour-man was standing in the corner by the 
 sink, where a man got fifty francs a month for scrub- 
 bing the utensils, after washing them in foul-smelling 
 water. He darted an unfinished sneer at Fat-Month, 
 which left his mouth open in his flour-covered face, 
 then he burst out: 
 
 "Did you ever know the beat o' that? A guy 
 readin' in workin' hours! A fine example for the 
 apprentices! I don't drink in workin' hours, now, 
 do I? Drinkin' don't hinder you like readin', either. 
 And you're much fresher fer yer work if you go to a 
 house of nights, than if you go to one of them lecture 
 courses." 
 
 He never read anything, not even the papers. But 
 he was often drunk, and boasted of the number of
 
 FAT-MONTH 109 
 
 drinks he could hold, as well as of his collection of 
 venereal diseases. He came to his work restless and 
 loud-mouthed about his ability: 
 
 " Look how much I turned out to-day, and it's all 
 good stuff too. I never hit the sheets at all last night, 
 and poured thirty drinks into my gut." He went be- 
 hind the ice-box for a moment. " That's my seventh 
 for to-day and I ought to get a tobacco-shop from 
 the Government." 
 
 Fat-Month called to him from the oven: 
 
 "Yer rum-cakes is leaking" for the moulds were 
 overflowing. 
 
 The flour-man retaliated: 
 
 " It's you done that. You raised 'em too quick." 
 
 Fat-Month was angry: 
 
 " Come cook 'em yerself, bone-head. You'd do yer 
 work better if you weren't such a tank." 
 
 The flour-man came back at him: 
 
 "It's you's the bone-head. And readin's what's 
 done it. You ain't got the guts to take a drink." 
 
 At that moment M. Nicollet arrived upon the scene: 
 
 " Get to yer work, will you! And don't let me hear 
 any more rumpus." 
 
 " All right," said Fat-Month, " only you've got to 
 tell him it's his fault. Look what a mess that is." 
 
 M. Nicollet didn't want to take sides with a new 
 man against an old one: 
 
 " Don't tell me what to do. I'm boss around here! "
 
 i io PEOPLE 
 
 Fat-Month took off his apron: 
 
 " You won't do it? ... All right, I'm leaving." 
 
 Seeing that he had no chance of keeping this valuable 
 though stubborn man, the boss let him have it: 
 
 " So this is what I get for my trouble, old sour-facel 
 And after I was willing to take you without a certifi- 
 cate! . . . You went after your other employer with 
 a shovel. . . . And you know what we agreed. 
 ... No fighting, or else . . . You can't expect a 
 reference. ..." 
 
 " I never fight," said Fat-Month. " I'm not getting 
 fair play, and I'm going when I've done me work. 
 I'll finish what I got started in the oven, and leave 
 everything tidy." 
 
 The flour-man beat a march with his rolling-pin on 
 the marble slab, while Fat-Month rolled up his things 
 without tying them up, so that he could show M. 
 Nicollet that he hadn't taken anything. At the foot 
 of the dusty stairway, he shook hands with Joseph, 
 who had put on a clean jacket. It was the smallest 
 one in the place, but the sleeves had to be turned up 
 because they covered his hands. 
 
 " Good-bye, Colossus. And there's two things you 
 must always care about: Justice and yer work."
 
 THE FLY-CATCHER 
 
 JULES GHYS'S family used to say: 
 
 " He's not ill, he's only drunk." 
 
 This was why, at the age of fifty, he became an 
 inmate of the Home for Incurables, and appeared to 
 spend his days in catching flies. Not that he could 
 ever have actually caught one, but, owing to a nervous 
 twitching motion, produced by the six thousand litres 
 of gin he had consumed, a pint a day, one got the 
 impression that this was his occupation, and they 
 called him the Fly-Catcher. He hardly ever left the 
 Home, for the manager wouldn't allow him to go out 
 alone, and his people, who were beet-distillers at Pont- 
 a-Marcq, refused to have visits from him there. They 
 had their reputation to think of. 
 
 His joy was unbounded when he discovered, one 
 day, that all the old men and incurables had to go to 
 the municipal elections, to vote for the retiring 
 Council. He had to be dosed with bromide, in order 
 to forestall his twitch No. 2. This was to beat one 
 of his buttocks with his clenched fist, and if, by mis- 
 take, he attacked himself in front, the beating occurred 
 somewhere beneath his navel. This seeming obscenity 
 afforded great amusement to his grinning audience of 
 urchins and old men. 
 
 in
 
 112 PEOPLE 
 
 M. Tison, besides being Mayor, was a prosperous 
 restaurant owner, and his 122 bars had supplied many 
 patients to the Home he had endowed in order to 
 obtain a decoration. To-day he had come to speak 
 to these old men, broken down by work or alcohol. 
 Their intense stupidity gave them an appearance of 
 rapt attention, as they sat with hands on their canes, 
 and their rounded backs stretching their blue uniforms 
 out of shape. The attendants kept the Fly-Catcher 
 at the back of the hall, with the others who had em- 
 barrassing peculiarities. 
 
 After this ceremony, the ones who still had the 
 power of speech, drew aside those who could only 
 slobber, and complained bitterly against the food they 
 were given to eat: 
 
 "We ga' t' eat raw herr'n. Th' blood goes tchik 
 when yo' bite 'em." 
 
 They were given two ballots, not blank ones, but 
 bearing M. Tison's name, one in each pocket, to re- 
 lieve them of the trouble of searching. 
 
 M. Hanel was in great favour with the retiring 
 Council, and, consequently, the possessor of a decora- 
 tion, in spite of the fact that, owing to his engrossing 
 occupation of selling beer and gin, he had almost for- 
 gotten how to write. The Fly-Catcher, and his 
 freakish companions, were placed in charge of M. 
 Hanel and four members of M. Tison's committee, 
 lor they needed steering in the crowd of other old
 
 THE FLY-CATCHER 113 
 
 men, also well primed, but who were allowed to vote 
 without help. 
 
 Gay-coloured posters in the rue de Lille set forth 
 the usual political qualifications of the candidates. 
 M. Tison's men were quick to cover the Opposition's 
 declarations with a lengthy discourse, that began as 
 follows: 
 
 " That wretched M. Chapelier, whose head must be 
 full of dough rather than brains, and who cannot keep 
 a servant in his house, has the effrontery to believe 
 that he can conduct the government of the com- 
 mune. ..." 
 
 M. Chapelier's committee utilized the posters which 
 had been drawn up by M. Tison's followers four years 
 before, and they argued that, since these pronounce- 
 ments had won the election for the Opposition then, 
 they might win it for M. Chapelier this time. The 
 name on the red placard was all that had to be 
 changed: 
 
 " That worthless individual, M. Chapelier ..." 
 And M. Tison was now accused, as he had accused 
 his opponent, of never discharging his debts, of sleep- 
 ing with his housemaids, of using consecrated wafers 
 to affix advertisements of copaiva balsam in lava- 
 tories. 
 
 Attention was also called to M. Tison's declara- 
 tions, followed, in each instance, by this simple re- 
 mark: " What rubbish! " The quotations were printed
 
 ii4 PEOPLE 
 
 in the smallest type the printer could produce, and 
 the replies in the largest: 
 
 " M. Tison accuses us of having stopped the procession of the 
 Assumption, and of having ill-treated the tradespeople; 
 
 WHAT RUBBISH! 
 
 M. Tison accuses us of having baptised our children, and of 
 unfaithfulness to our convictions; 
 
 WHAT RUBBISH/" 
 
 In a special address to the old men and the in- 
 curables, M. Hanel said: " It's all a big joke, because 
 they've put this in, and it's true; that the promise, 
 given before the last elections, to increase the pen- 
 sions of people like you has not been kept." 
 
 The old men stopped listening to the haranguing 
 of M. Hanel, so he shoved them gently towards the 
 door, with those hands that were so quick at pushing 
 mugs across a bar. 
 
 " We must hurry and vote, if you want to have time 
 for a drink afterwards." 
 
 The Fly-Catcher was able, during this commotion, 
 to shake his arms about as much as he liked, and his 
 legs too, so that he was soon far from his caretakers. 
 To go after him was out of the question, because the 
 others wanted to follow his example at once, and they 
 needed the attention of all the escorts. So the Fly- 
 Catcher was abandoned, in order that the others might 
 not escape. 
 
 In front of the Town Hall, M. Marcilliau, one of
 
 THE FLY-CATCHER 115 
 
 M. Chapelier's committee, had the little band of in- 
 curables circularized by his distributers, and M. 
 Hanel's men had great difficulty in getting these papers 
 away from the old men, who all wanted to have what 
 their companions had. 
 
 When at last they were filing up the Town Hall 
 stairs, M. Hanel prepared them for their electoral 
 duty by carefully examining their ballots, and seeing 
 that they did not eat them or use them to polish the 
 hand-rail. When he was satisfied that they all had 
 the right ones, he thanked them after this fashion: 
 
 "All right, clear out! Off with you! " But his 
 troubles were not yet ended. The appearance of the 
 Fly-Catcher in the ranks of the Opposition, under the 
 wings of M. Marcilliau and another of M. Chapelier's 
 followers, produced a fresh excitement, and M. Hanel 
 was unable to rectify such a flagrant departure from 
 the accepted rules of voting, for people were yelling: 
 
 " Stop pushing, please; these gentlemen know how 
 they want to vote! " 
 
 This was evidently the Fly-Catcher's opinion too, 
 for he stuck close to M. Marcilliau, who had strength- 
 ened his arguments with a big lump of chewing 
 tobacco. The new recruit had his mouth full of it, 
 and the juice running from his lips mingled its foul 
 odour with the reek of gin. 
 
 M. Hanel whispered something to M. Desroussaux- 
 Seynaeve, one of the Mayor's deputies, who had
 
 ii6 PEOPLE 
 
 charge of the ballot-box; he was seated beneath the 
 plaster bust of the Republic, which looked very white 
 in front of a festoon of eight new tricolour flags worth 
 95 centimes each. He understood at once, and being 
 able to tell by the feel of a ballot what name it bore, 
 he made all the adverse ones worthless with an inky 
 finger. When the Fly-Catcher came up with his bal- 
 lot, the deputy could not get it out of his fluttering 
 grasp without showing his own dipped finger, and they 
 looked as though they were both after the same fly. 
 The Chapelier committee, who were used to all such 
 methods, kept a closer watch than ever, and Jules 
 Ghys put his valid ballot through the slit in the pine 
 box with his own hand. 
 
 The Fly-Catcher's pleasures were now over. M. 
 Marcilliau had had enough of him, and a push was all 
 the thanks he got from that quarter. M. Hanel ap- 
 peased his anger by digging him savagely in the ribs, 
 and this continued until he got out into the street. 
 There he followed a gang of youthful enthusiasts who 
 passed by singing the Marseillaise. The last verse 
 died out, by arrangement, in a cabaret where the Fly- 
 Catcher had the right to free drinks at the expense 
 of the Tison committee. But his opinions were im- 
 possible to stabilize, for he was seen later on with 
 another gang whose slogan was: " To hell with 
 priests! " 
 
 These simple words seemed to delight him, and,
 
 THE FLY-CATCHER 117 
 
 after being sick on the floor of the anti-clerical cabaret, 
 for which performance he was ejected into the street 
 by a perspiring waiter, he went off, repeating them 
 over and over again, with no regard whatever for the 
 politics of his listeners. He barely escaped having to 
 undergo bitter punishment for his sectarianism, at the 
 hands of another group, whose throats were busy with 
 the praises of Jeanne d'Arc, but he changed his tune, 
 and could therefore enter their cabaret. 
 
 Better news of the election's progress calmed M. 
 Hanel's anger, and he said: 
 
 "Pretty close thing, what! " 
 
 M. Marcilliau agreed with him, which proved that 
 they had both used, with equal daring, every available 
 weapon. Each had done his utmost, in the way of 
 inventing slander and insult, and intoxicating the 
 electors. 
 
 M. Hanel was worried by the thought of being 
 unable to take the Fly-Catcher back to the Home with 
 the other old men. He knew very well that the gin 
 from M. Tison's 122 bars would have its result, 
 and fully realized the harm that would be done, should 
 the Opposition discover one of them having an attack 
 of the D.T.'s or epilepsy in the street. 
 
 The task of finding the Fly-Catcher was entrusted 
 to M. Descattoires, who was still sober, in spite of 
 the enormous quantity of liquor he had been obliged 
 to consume while engaged in collecting voters. He
 
 ii8 PEOPLE 
 
 prepared for a long hunt, and went off muttering the 
 reward he would exact for his trouble: 
 
 " Between here and the Home, me old boy, I'll land 
 ye a hundred good roots in the tail." 
 
 The Fly-Catcher's political contradictions made the 
 realization of this ambition a doubtful matter. It 
 wasn't worth while going the rounds of all the clerical 
 cabarets, only to find the old fellow singing Red Revo- 
 lution in the camp of the Opposition, so Descattoires 
 endured their sour glances, happily not unaccom- 
 panied by drinks, and acquired this information: 
 
 " That ole devil out o' th' Home? He's off wid a 
 lot o' them clerical guys. Guess he's to vespers by 
 this time." 
 
 None of the sleeping men in the quiet church proved 
 to be the Fly-Catcher, and Descattoires poked his cane 
 into the confessionals, and made a useless trip around 
 by the candle-laden altar. Then he began conscien- 
 tiously to visit all the bars again. At ten o'clock he 
 no longer knew his own politics. Some people swear 
 they saw him with a gang who were shouting: 
 
 " Vive Chapelierl " 
 and 
 
 " Tison, c'est un cochon 
 
 La digue digue don ..." 
 
 The Fly-Catcher hasn't been found yet, and it's a 
 pity, for there is to be a second ballot. He's got to 
 vote again.
 
 A RICH CITY 
 (1903) 
 
 has only recently become a rich city; 
 Roubaix and Turcoing are passing through a similar 
 period of industrial prosperity, and the wooden army 
 huts outside the old walls of Lille are now used as 
 dwellings by its rapidly increasing population. In the 
 old days, and up to just before the War of 1870, 
 Armentieres had for its motto: "Poor and Proud." 
 Twenty years ago one word of it was changed: " Rich 
 and Proud." 
 
 The textile industry brought this about in one gen- 
 eration. Weavers with small capital established them- 
 selves as big manufacturers, by marrying into the rich 
 industrial families of Lille. There was money-making 
 in the air, and capital was plentiful, but this prosperity 
 did not extend outside the employer class; the work- 
 ing-people reaped none of its benefits. Their numbers 
 increased, in order to supply more labour, but wages 
 remained miserably inadequate, an essential factor in 
 the process of fortune-making. A few very rich peo- 
 ple, and a multitude of poor ones! That was what 
 made a town prosperous and productive! All over 
 France people talked about " The Wealth of Armen- 
 tieres." 
 
 119
 
 120 PEOPLE 
 
 The little business men who had become big manu- 
 facturers were all suffering from the affliction common 
 among the new-rich: the fear of starving. They were 
 terrified by the thought of losing the flesh they had 
 so lately taken on, and their monopoly of the profits 
 brought misery to their unfortunate dependents. 
 
 Luxury became a necessity among these new-rich; 
 if a man was worth more than his neighbour, he 
 wished the fact to be known, and he didn't mind pay- 
 ing to prove it. The misery of the workers increased 
 proportionately, and neither their indignation, nor 
 their strikes, nor the tariff of 1889, could check this 
 mad desire for gain on the part of the manufacturers, 
 or their determination to give the worker the least 
 possible share in it: the price of his slice of bread with 
 no meat on it, and his pint of beer. 
 
 The families of the manufacturers were as large as 
 those of the workers, and more money was needed to 
 establish these children in business. The worker's 
 wrath becomes all the more violent when he has 
 watched a pile being made in one generation. Per- 
 haps his father had known a manufacturer, or one 
 whose son was now a manufacturer, when he only had 
 a little spinning-mill and a small piece of land, or 
 even when he was still an overseer. They had been 
 friends in those days, and then came the rich marriage 
 and the prosperity; the succeeding years brought 
 wretched poverty to one and great riches to the other,
 
 A RICH CITY 121 
 
 and to-day they pass each other without speaking. 
 The workman's son watches the manufacturer's wealth 
 growing each day, and he sees his own existence fol- 
 lowing the same miserable course as that of his father. 
 
 The jealousy of this multitude of workmen who 
 have remained poor makes Armentieres a furnace of 
 hatred, and strikes become bitter contests; old, deep- 
 rooted passions flame up into deeds that lead to riots 
 and plundering. 
 
 We have just seen this happen. 
 
 The rich man holds himself aloof from everything. 
 He helps nobody and patronizes none of the shops. 
 All his clothes, his shoes, and his furniture come from 
 Lille or Paris. At Armentieres, no shop-keeper could 
 exist by catering to the rich, and there are only little 
 shops for the poor. Building firms are the only local 
 ones patronized by the rich man. His factory, close 
 to the station, and his home on the other side of the 
 Lys, provide his rivals with solid, visual proofs of his 
 financial standing. He places a dome upon his fac- 
 tory, which can be seen from a great distance; it 
 serves no other purpose. Then his business com- 
 petitor and financial rival puts a more elaborate one 
 on his, that can be seen from a greater distance. This 
 rivalry grows into a hatred which is equalled only by 
 the workmen's hatred of them. Once a house was 
 acquired by one of these gentlemen on Belgian terri- 
 tory, and one of his rivals immediately bought up the
 
 122 PEOPLE 
 
 surrounding property, in order to spread upon it every 
 possible kind of rubbish and filth from his factory and 
 his country house. Two families might have been fed 
 from this land thus used for no better purpose than 
 to enrage a rich man's rival. 
 
 The architecture of the aristocratic portions of the 
 city, where the manufacturers live, is expensively 
 ornate, owing to a feverish inter-city rivalry. In that 
 quarter, one sees fat, overfed servants, and their mas- 
 ters who appear to be almost as well nourished: 
 luxurious beings, oozing greed and abundance from 
 every pore. And if you want to see the poor trash 
 upon whom they live, you need only cross the Lys. 
 From the Grande Place to the far end of Houplines, 
 there are rows of workmen's dwellings, black and 
 monotonous, with tiny doors, and windows with little 
 white curtains. Every now and then, the high walls 
 of a factory rise up abruptly, and then again the eye 
 follows the low line of mean hovels on either side of 
 the street. Here and there the two lines are cut by 
 short passages, through which can be seen the fields 
 behind: that great northern plain with its windmills, 
 each making the sign of the Cross. 
 
 As a supplement to their wretched wages, these peo- 
 ple sometimes dabble in fraudulent trade: the intro- 
 duction of Belgian goods received from professional 
 smugglers. Besides the men who have horses and 
 bring in full carts of tobacco, there are great numbers
 
 A RICH CITY 123 
 
 of Flemish, Belgian, and French youths who support 
 themselves by means of this illicit trading, for it is a 
 calling that requires nimble feet. Related to the 
 weavers, living and trading with them, these youths 
 also hate the rich manufacturers, and they have 
 another quality common to persecuted men: audacity. 
 
 They, and the weavers' sons, took prominent places 
 in the front ranks of the mob that had just converted 
 the strike into a riot; the former did not lack the 
 courage to strike the first blow, and the other 
 youngsters, who were quite angry enough, but needed 
 someone to set the example, broke things up with just 
 as much spirit, when they had conquered their 
 timidity. They destroyed the property that had been 
 acquired by the rich men with their help and under 
 their very eyes; they broke the windows without shut- 
 ters as they passed, and stopped to tear down shutters 
 when they found them. When a house was entered, 
 nothing remained intact. According to the custom of 
 the North, where it is unnecessary to shield oneself 
 from the sun, only the ground floor windows are 
 shuttered, and this for safety at night. All the others 
 present their unguarded panes to the street, irrespec- 
 tive of the weather. 
 
 The rich men's houses have plate-glass in their win- 
 dows, affording a sight of curtain-fringes, crystal 
 chandeliers, ferns, and bronze statues. The lace at the 
 windows looks as fine and white as gimp in a show-
 
 124 PEOPLE 
 
 case. Look out! A volley of big stones smashes 
 through it. Downstairs the shutters are cracking; 
 angry shouts come up from the front door, crashing 
 inwards. In the invaded drawing-room, a boy of 
 eighteen is beating time against a tall mirror with 
 two bronze candlesticks, while the jagged pieces fall 
 down among the ornaments on the black marble 
 mantel. 
 
 Hatred flames up, and has its full revenge. Two 
 poor railwaymen, roughly discharged by a richly 
 married inspector, have brought a mob to ransack 
 his luxurious house. Outside in the street, the crowds, 
 who hadn't the courage to join in the plundering, are 
 filled with excitement by the noise within, and they 
 scream their approval, as they push towards the 
 broken door. It is irritating not to have broken any 
 of those hated possessions; and they would have gone 
 on until they had destroyed all the houses of the 
 rich, had it not been for the sudden gleam of an 
 officer's nickelled breastplate. The men behind him, 
 with their unpolished ones, fill the street, and the 
 horses switch the walls of the houses with their 
 tails. 
 
 The sight of drawn swords sends the crowds scut- 
 tling homewards; there is a frantic clattering of heavy 
 shoes through tiny back gardens, and excited discus- 
 sions are carried on behind the little white curtains. 
 
 They run before soldiers, but they bear them no
 
 A RICH CITY 125 
 
 ill-will. If there is one standing on guard at a 
 blocked street, or on duty at a factory entrance, they 
 talk with him; prostitutes laugh with him or pity 
 him. The men ask, " When's your time up? " And 
 if a faint-hearted one doesn't know how to clear a 
 pavement, lacking the courage to bring the butt-end 
 of his gun upon the encroaching feet, they will obey 
 him, to prevent his getting punished by the watchful 
 officer. They have been soldiers themselves. 
 
 With an officer it is a different matter; towards 
 him they are sarcastic and insulting, out of revenge 
 for the treatment they received when in service. His 
 gold braid is too shiny, and hurts their eyes, so they 
 throw mud at it. Braid is all very well at a pageant, 
 but they loathe the sight of it when there is a strike 
 on. Then it is a menace. 
 
 The most hated of all is the policeman; he is more 
 ruthless than the others, and the cleverest of all at 
 persecution. He knows his way about, and is ac- 
 quainted with everybody. He notices the smugglers 
 who are taking part in the rioting, for he's been on 
 their track before, and knows them both by appear- 
 ance and by name. He has his fingers in everything, 
 and there are innumerable old scores against him to 
 be settled. The rioters would like to string up a 
 policeman, and one of those elegant officers who look 
 like disguised women, and naturally a manufacturer.
 
 126 PEOPLE 
 
 One Sunday, two weeks later, I came out of the 
 Armentieres station into silent streets. I had been 
 accustomed to hearing the pounding of horses' hoofs 
 and the clatter of fleeing workmen's shoes, and the 
 unexpected stillness pleased me. 
 
 Presently I was accosted by several little girls in 
 the most pitiful rags, who had been leaning against 
 a wall. One of them asked eagerly for money. Her 
 hair was pulled tightly to the back of her head, and 
 tied with an old piece of red ribbon that had become 
 a mere cord, making her bared ears look enormous. 
 
 " Please, Mister, there's six of us at home, and we 
 ain't got enough to eat." 
 
 The others hadn't their hair combed at all, and 
 moaned unintelligibly. I walked off rapidly, for I had 
 next to nothing to live on myself, but the little girl, 
 with her hair pulled back, ran along at my side, re- 
 peating: 
 
 " Mister, we ain't got enough to eat! " 
 
 If she had been lying she would have said, 'We 
 ain't got nothing to eat.' 
 
 Professional beggars lie in the superlative, and peo- 
 ple who tell the truth speak a language that the others 
 never use. This little girl described the actual state 
 of affairs: "Not enough to eat." After her meals 
 she was still hungry. I gave her two sous and hurried 
 off. Her angry companions cast envious glances in 
 her direction, and she moved a little away from them.
 
 A RICH CITY 127 
 
 Then they turned to me again, and, pushing the hair 
 away from their swimming eyes, whined: 
 
 " Me too, Mister. Me too, Mister." 
 
 They pressed up close to me, all except the tiniest 
 one, who was apparently a cripple; she seemed unable 
 to follow them, in spite of her heroic attempts to do 
 so, and the one with my two sous showed them to her, 
 saying: 
 
 " That makes six already! " 
 
 When the others saw her cross the street towards 
 a man who looked more prosperous than I did, they 
 abandoned me in order to get to him first. 
 
 From time to time women passed arm in arm down 
 the silent street, in badly fitting clothes of some plain, 
 heavy material. Here, in the rich quarter, where the 
 rioting had taken place, many shutters and doors were 
 pieced with new white wood, making them look as 
 though they had been bandaged, and the frosted glass 
 transom above one freshly varnished door had been 
 temporarily repaired with a piece of ordinary window- 
 glass. These violated houses, now repaired and closed 
 to the street, had their silken blinds drawn down, like 
 closed eyelids. 
 
 A young girl, followed by a youth, came out of a 
 gate with bronze latches; both of them were luxuri- 
 ously attired, healthy, and vigorous. A tall, shiny 
 collar seemed to push the young man's thick lips and 
 fat chin into prominence; his slender companion was
 
 128 PEOPLE 
 
 exquisite in her new frock, which exhaled an expensive 
 perfume. Once in the street, she said to him, 
 " Quickly! " and hurried off on the sharp toes of her 
 new shiny shoes, that crackled as she ran. 
 
 Two policemen stood inoffensively in the square, 
 where I had once seen bristling swords and shining 
 breastplates; they were anxiously awaiting the mo- 
 ment when they could knock off and go and have a 
 drink. I walked past the Town Hall, and on into the 
 poor districts, where the broken iron covers of the 
 man-holes were still unreplaced. In this way traps 
 had been laid for horses charging down the streets. 
 Volleys of stones had made a clean sweep of the fac- 
 tory windows, and there were jagged holes in all ex- 
 cept one, high up under the roof. 
 
 On Sundays, and naturally during a strike, the fires 
 are extinguished and no smoke rises from the chimney. 
 Since there is thick mud everywhere, owing to the wet 
 weather and badly made pavements, boys who have 
 their best clothes on can only gaze longingly at the 
 big stones in the street. The long rows of low dwell- 
 ings, darkened by frequent high factory-walls, have a 
 hostile aspect, and it requires courage to open one of 
 those doors, set in endless black walls that rise out 
 of the thick mud. Within, there is dreariness and 
 gloom, until the eye is relieved by the sight of the first 
 window. A square of bright light comes through the 
 little muslin curtains of all these smoke-blackened
 
 A RICH CITY 129 
 
 hovels. The front door, though only as big as the 
 door of a cupboard, is kept shut, and the sill whitened. 
 How do people live in places like this? One can walk 
 the whole length of that filthy street without hearing 
 a sound behind those curtains. 
 
 I discovered Vandermer's restaurant, where I had 
 taken refuge one day during the rioting, and had 
 stood by the door with the others who were scoffing 
 at the cuirassiers. Mme. Vandermer warned us that 
 they would hit us with their foraging ropes, so we 
 withdrew into the restaurant. Through the window, 
 we could see some street urchins pick up big stones, 
 and throw them at the approaching horsemen. When 
 they were about twenty yards off, the urchins retreated 
 rapidly into a narrow alley. 
 
 The shining breastplate of an officer now appeared, 
 and the restaurant curtains, which had been drawn 
 back, fell into their places. The cuirassiers had ap- 
 proached slowly during the shower of stones, and they 
 now stretched across the street from wall to wall. The 
 horse on the pavement nearest to us clouded the 
 restaurant window with its breath, and its tail, 
 swishing against the glass, sounded like pattering 
 rain. 
 
 The moment they had passed, we opened the door, 
 and saw the long line of shaking manes and unpolished 
 breastplates. Then the army of urchins emerged from 
 the alley, and began picking up fresh ammunition.
 
 -130 PEOPLE 
 
 This Sunday when I entered the restaurant, Mme. 
 Vandermer recognized me: 
 
 "No soldiers to-day! " She had to say something 
 to me, while pouring out my beer. 
 
 Her other customers were seated around shiny 
 tables, smoking Belgian tobacco in long clay pipes. 
 One serious old fellow, whose face was like a stone 
 image, spoke slowly, lifting the lid of his pewter mug: 
 
 " A fine business! All th' same, they done too much 
 breakin' up! " 
 
 A young man, with his cap pulled down over his 
 eyes, objected: 
 
 " If we hadn't broke nothin', we'd 'a' got nothin' fer 
 all our trouble! " 
 
 Both men spat on the sanded floor, and pulled again 
 at their long white pipes. The smoke rose up from 
 each table, like steam from a huge soup-kettle, and 
 the room was blue with it. 
 
 " Everybody's owin' money these days," put in 
 Mme. Vandermer, " and there's hundreds and hun- 
 dreds out o' work! " 
 
 I paid for my beer, and the door, closing behind 
 me, expelled a puff of blue smoke into the street. As 
 I walked down the long muddy thoroughfare that leads 
 through Houplines, my steps made a noise like grease 
 on gear wheels. At the end of each narrow passage 
 between the houses, I could see the open country, 
 where the wind blew ceaselessly against the black
 
 A RICH CITY 131 
 
 poplars, bending them so continuously that their 
 efforts to straighten up again were invisible. One 
 would have declared they had grown at that angle. 
 After each little clear spot came long stretches of 
 blackened brick, dotted with white curtains. 
 
 I passed some men bound for a cock-fight, with 
 their birds in bags under their arms. Far down the 
 street I could hear the hooting of the tramway horn, 
 and this short, dismal sound fell clearly on my ears, 
 for there was no echo in that flat country. How 
 exasperating those curtains were! Not even one 
 corner lifted up. Behind them, absolute silence. They 
 gave one the same feeling of uneasiness as do the 
 stubbornly closed eyes of people who are suffering. 
 And were they inside there, those hundreds and hun- 
 dreds of people without work, and the families of 
 those little girls who had asked me for money at the 
 station? 
 
 Still another of those little narrow passages, opening 
 on to a vast brown field, swimming in mist and 
 drenched by rain. Then the rows of lifeless doors and 
 windows again. Oh, the poverty behind those white 
 curtains! And the cock-fighters still walked past: 
 ignorant, boastful men chattering about the birds they 
 were taking to be killed. I turned into an alley lead- 
 ing to a little courtyard surrounded by houses that 
 looked even smaller than the others. It was like being 
 in a hole, but I also experienced the pleasant sensation
 
 i 3 2 PEOPLE 
 
 of having found a refuge; the intimate atmosphere 
 of these secretive little dwellings seemed to come out 
 through their walls, and pervade the deserted court- 
 yard. The grey sky was so low that it seemed to 
 touch the roofs, and this was what gave me the sensa- 
 tion of standing at the bottom of a pit. The wind 
 blowing above them seemed to have spent its force in 
 the great surrounding plain. 
 
 A tiny plaintive sound was coming from one of the 
 houses, and I pretended to take a drink at the straw- 
 covered pump, in order to conceal the fact that I was 
 listening. There, behind one of those curtains, some- 
 one was playing an accordion very gently, meekly, 
 secretly. It was easy to guess that the person playing 
 it like this had a shy disposition, and that he went 
 through life without ever being at his ease; readily 
 discouraged, and trying to take up as little room as 
 he possibly could. It was like a disinherited child, 
 proud and sensitive, sobbing where no one could 
 hear. ... I longed to see his face. Was he old? 
 Was he young? I shall never know. 
 
 It was a refined little complaint, behind a very white 
 curtain in a tiny black house, with the wind of the 
 plains roaring above. And I shall never forget it.
 
 "MILLER, YOU'RE ASLEEP" 
 
 "MILLER, you're asleep" said the inquisitive visitor 
 to the man who sat on a pile of bags, with his back 
 against a board partition. He had been asleep, in 
 spite of the vibration caused by the turning sails, but 
 now he slowly lifted his eyelids, and his grey eyes 
 shone forth from his flour-covered face. The inquisi- 
 tive man asked: 
 
 " Isn't the mill running too fast? Surely this gale 
 is too much for it? " 
 
 The man who had been awakened stretched out his 
 arms until one had the impression of a crucifixion: 
 
 " If you were a miller, you wouldn't be afraid of 
 wind hurting a windmill. For eight days there's only 
 been a little soft breeze, low down on the ground, but 
 yesterday morning it began to come fresh and sharp 
 out of the north. Last night the sails were moving; 
 they could feel the wind. Now it's dropped down 
 again." 
 
 His questioner was amazed: 
 
 " You work at night? " 
 
 " All night. And sometimes after a full day of it, 
 too. When the wind blows, there's work to be done; 
 that's how it is with me. When the wind drops, the 
 
 133
 
 134 PEOPLE 
 
 mill's idle, but it's always ready to do its part. If 
 I had to go to bed to sleep, I couldn't tend a windmill. 
 A good miller makes use of every breath that blows, 
 for no man can get back the wind when it's died 
 down." 
 
 The visitor continued: 
 
 " When I first saw the little mill from over yonder, 
 I said to myself: What a pleasant occupation that 
 would be; the miller there must be a happy man. 
 And now I find you sometimes don't get your sleep. 
 When the miller sleeps, it means he's at the end of 
 his strength." 
 
 " It worries me to have the mill idle. And as for 
 rest, I get plenty of it when there's no wind. Then 
 I've got the canvas to mend. There's always some- 
 thing to do. If you're working in a steam mill, you 
 have regular hours; every day is the same, and the 
 machinery starts and stops whenever you want. But 
 the old windmills produce better flour." 
 
 The inquisitive man saw 1772 carved on the huge 
 oak trunk that served as a pivot for this revolving 
 structure, and he examined the old mechanism of 
 wooden beams and rope transmissions. There was no 
 iron anywhere; nothing but fine old carpentry work, 
 with tenoned and mortised oak. 
 
 "You couldn't get one built like it to-day," said 
 the miller. "That oak pivot has a hundred and 
 twenty-nine circles: a hundred and twenty-nine years!
 
 " MILLER, YOU'RE ASLEEP " 135 
 
 You'd never be able to hug that the way you hug 
 your wife, and she'll never be as old as that. Folks 
 don't want to live that long. This mill's a lucky one, 
 too. Never a fire, from the day it started going; sails 
 have been carried away in heavy storms, but the mill's 
 never been blown over since the day it was built." 
 
 His listener was lost in meditation. Through a 
 hundred and twenty-nine springs and summers this 
 trunk had borne green foliage and had sheltered nest- 
 ing birds. 
 
 The miller went up the ladder to pour some wheat 
 into the funnel above the furrowed grinder, which the 
 revolving sails turned upon the nether stone. He took 
 up a handful, and let it fall back through his fingers 
 into the funnel. 
 
 " This belongs to the farmer ploughing over there," 
 he said; " it's beautiful wheat." And he pointed 
 through a little window, about the size of his face, to 
 a man guiding his black horse over the light brown 
 earth, where the wheat had ripened almost in the 
 shadow of the windmill's sails. 
 
 The fields were flooded with the pale green of early 
 spring, and the branches of the trees were still visible 
 behind tiny leaves as soft as down. " If they would 
 only stay like that and not grow any more," thought 
 the enraptured man, and his eyes devoured the young 
 green, the loveliest green of all the year. Then he 
 pointed to a rigid poplar, bristling with little branches.
 
 136 PEOPLE 
 
 " It is said that no man can count the stars. Can 
 the branches of a tree be counted? " 
 
 The miller took hold of the rope beside the ladder, 
 and said good-night, inclining his flour-covered head: 
 
 " I've run this mill for forty years; they planted 
 the poplars along the road after I came, and look at 
 them now, higher than these sails." 
 
 " Forty years of it! You've been able to put by 
 something! " 
 
 " I've got a little piece of land. To-day I get forty- 
 five francs a month, and food and lodging as well. At 
 one time it was only twenty; there used to be mills 
 scattered over the fields all the way to Lille, but now 
 only two oil-mills are left, and I am the only one for 
 flour, not as white as you get from the steam mills, 
 but honest flour. At the steam mills they do a lot 
 of mixing. Here, there's the grain from one field only 
 in the bags." 
 
 The questioner continued, pointing to the man in 
 the fields: 
 
 " Does he make his living? " 
 
 " Yes, there are three like him in the village, with 
 ovens in their houses. The others give their flour to 
 the baker to make up. People like baker's bread 
 nowadays, and there's money made in that trade. My 
 employer charges thirty sous to grind a hectolitre. 
 He's a carter, too; he takes in the wheat, and sends 
 back the flour, and he doesn't do badly when the wind
 
 " MILLER, YOU'RE ASLEEP " 137 
 
 is blowing, twenty-one hectolitres a day. He won't 
 make much more to-day; the wind's getting lazy." 
 
 The sail shaft, which was geared on to the grind- 
 stone-pivot with oak pegs, revolved more slowly, caus- 
 ing the ladder to quiver slightly, and the miller said 
 good-night again to his visitor, who descended cau- 
 tiously. The old man's powdery clothes gave him 
 the same colour as the wood, and his eyes gleamed 
 brightly through a dull mask of dust. 
 
 The inquisitive man walked for some distance along 
 the grey road, and then turned back to look across 
 the green fields at the mill, the earth's faithful com- 
 panion, for whose grindstone a hundred and fifty 
 harvests had ripened under the sun. The sails were 
 barely moving in the waning breeze, and they made 
 the slow, agonized gestures of a dying man. 
 
 Before very long, he thought, the last sail will turn 
 its last turn. To-day, men let the wind blow past 
 them, and this old industry will soon disappear. 
 
 A red chimney rose up into the motionless twilight 
 behind him; it seemed to be still glowing with the heat 
 of the vanished sun, a chimney so high and thin, 
 that its sootless smoke issued forth, imperceptibly, 
 among the little mauve clouds in the purple sky. 
 
 " When a century or more has passed," he thought, 
 " will men stand in the twilight to look upon the deli- 
 cate ruins of the last tall chimney? The sails of the 
 last windmill are precious to me to-day, and when my
 
 138 PEOPLE 
 
 body is part of the earth, beneath the feet of men 
 who pass by here, will they admire the red stack above 
 the flaming furnace? And will they grieve when this 
 ancient pillar, sending forth smoke like a sacrificial 
 altar, yields up its place to newer forms, while cen- 
 turies pass over the last miller's grave: 
 Miller, you're asleep. . . ."
 
 A LABOUR DEMONSTRATION 
 
 Ax six o'clock in the evening, the lower room of the 
 Labour Exchange at Lille is full of men with clay 
 pipes and mugs of beer. Puffs of white smoke rise 
 towards the ceiling and are lost in the blue mist. No 
 one voice is trying to drown out the rest; they are 
 all holding forth with equal violence, delighted to have 
 just elected as deputies men who have worked with 
 them, lived in the same squalor, and suffered similar 
 hardships. They are on the most familiar terms with 
 these men, and carry them about triumphantly on 
 their shoulders. Their election was accomplished in 
 spite of the deception practised by the gentlemen of 
 the Opposition: a party composed of upright people. 
 These upright people brought in a lot of disguised 
 Belgian monks, who voted nineteen times or more on 
 false ballots obtained from the Town Hall. The 
 Labour Exchange men, clever and determined indi- 
 viduals, watched these cunning monks, and finally 
 obliged the police to show up their flagrant deception. 
 Scandal broke loose, and the Mayor, who is a man of 
 considerable importance, resigned suddenly this morn- 
 ing. Festivities and every sort of merrymaking are 
 taking place in the poorer quarters. The Flemish 
 
 139
 
 140 PEOPLE 
 
 workmen, a bulky, malicious race of men, arrived 
 in force, and have just knocked the gilded horseman 
 from his charger; they roar with laughter at the rich 
 men, and at the priests too, for priests are friendly 
 with the rich men here. It is the priests who have set 
 up this golden God, the people's enemy and the 
 patron of Wealth. It stands for the oppression of the 
 poor, mercilessly dedicated to working for low wages 
 and dwelling in death-traps. 
 
 A man in a priest's hat gets up on a table, and, 
 dipping a brush into his glass of beer, he sprinkles 
 the holy water over the laughing faces of the men 
 clustering around the kegs. 
 
 Little red paper flags are being sold in the square, 
 and one sees them scattered through the crowd like 
 poppies. Here comes a procession from the Faubourg 
 des Postes, marching behind its accordion. They call 
 themselves: "The South." 
 
 "We're all right, us fellas from the South! " 
 
 Their arrival causes a slight commotion in the 
 patient crowd, but the musician plays on solemnly hi 
 front of the crimson, gilt-lettered standard. From 
 those tiny houses in " The South," black and un- 
 healthy, and from the abandoned army-huts, emerge 
 men and women with determined faces. They are 
 going to laugh, and dance, and scoff at the priests 
 those pitiless priests who distribute rich men's charity 
 in their homes, their ghastly Charily.
 
 A LABOUR DEMONSTRATION 141 
 
 The red flag of Poverty, passing through the crowd, 
 is acclaimed passionately by the women and joyfully 
 by the children, and the workmen wave their caps 
 above their heads. 
 
 The grave- faced man with the accordion stands 
 upon the table, from which the holy water was 
 sprinkled, and begins to play the old Carmagnole of 
 the soldiers of Wattignies: 
 
 "... Du pain pour nos 
 Vive le son ..." 
 
 They were there, those men from " The South," at 
 Wattignies, near Maubeuge. And here come the peo- 
 ple from Saint-Saveur, a still more crowded quarter: 
 filthy hovels beneath the city walls. They sing: 
 
 ". . . A la bataille, Us ont du occur, 
 Vivent les Saint-Saveur ..." 
 
 an old tune for the fife, which was played when the 
 army of the North marched to Denain under M. le 
 marquis de Villars. They were at Denain, those men 
 from Saint-Saveur, the Flemish Infantry. 
 
 This old, slow-moving race of labourers, once per- 
 secuted by the barons with their long spears, to-day 
 by the rich manufacturers with their big factories, 
 irriposed upon, beaten, and plundered, has begun to
 
 142 PEOPLE 
 
 bend under its burden. But the patient giant can 
 rise up when his time comes, obedient and insolent, 
 oppressed and invincible. To-day he is on his 
 feet. 
 
 Crowds of women have come out to celebrate the 
 "Broquelet," the festival of the thread. The 
 broquelet was the little bobbin once used by the 
 Flemish lace-makers, who used to sing, by the light 
 of their little student lamps: 
 
 " Si tu ne dors point jusqu'a demain, 
 Tu me jeras bien du chagrin" 
 
 To-day those lace-makers and their broquelets have 
 vanished, but the festival of the textile workers is still 
 called the " Broquelet." 
 
 The accordion-player falls into line, and the people 
 advance beneath their crop of flags, filling the streets 
 lined with hovels and factories. They march as one 
 man, without confusion or jostling; twenty thousand 
 people, shoulder to shoulder, except where children 
 march, unseen by the onlooker. The presence of a 
 child is marked by a well in the dense mass of men 
 and women. 
 
 Directly behind the music are those who will take 
 active part in the festival; they are surrounded by 
 masses of flowers, and everyone greets them by their 
 first names. Some men, in clerical hats, which rest
 
 A LABOUR DEMONSTRATION 143 
 
 precariously upon their irreverent heads, are gesticu- 
 lating like preachers, and they pull them as far down 
 over their eyes as possible. 
 
 The crowd surges by, demolishing all such obstruc- 
 tions as spectators leaning against the walls of the 
 houses, and it carries them along in its noisy current 
 of black and red. The pace slackens as they approach 
 the ancient streets: Wazemmes; Little Belgium; the 
 rue de Juliers where the Flemish of the Lys live, sons 
 of the men who bled at Courtrai, the knights of 
 Philippe le Bel; and the men from the intractable city 
 of Ghent. The Flemish words of the Internationale 
 issue forth from big, beer-drinking mouths in solemn 
 brown faces. The daylight begins to fade, and torch- 
 lights are held aloft on long poles. The crowd moves 
 onward, persistent, powerful. 
 
 Someone is carrying a pretty little girl on his shoul- 
 ders; she is wide-eyed with excitement, but not fright- 
 ened, for it is her father who is carrying her. He 
 sings with his head bent forward, and his little 
 daughter waves a flag which he bought her for a sou. 
 While the accordion is playing, she jumps up and 
 down with delight, and he clasps her feet to prevent 
 her from digging her heels into his chest. Her tiny 
 mouth moves; what is she saying? . . . she ad- 
 vances imperceptible, triumphant, with the singing 
 multitude. 
 
 Now they are passing through the rich quarter,
 
 144 PEOPLE 
 
 where their arrival was preceded by the sound of their 
 voices. A starless night hangs low over the luxurious 
 houses, and the wide streets enable the crowd to spread 
 to three times its size. The tramways, unable to move, 
 cleave the human tide, and it closes in again after 
 passing them. A man hammers the iron shutters cov- 
 ering the windows of expensive shops, just for the 
 pleasure of making a noise. Where the shutters have 
 not been lowered, he refrains from touching the glass. 
 All the children are being carried now, and they are 
 crying with exhaustion. The little girl with the flag 
 is asleep, with her arms crossed upon her father's 
 head. He is still singing. 
 
 The poor quarter has emptied its people into the 
 rich quarter. The crowd fills the Grande Place now, 
 and the pavement-tables of the restaurants are empty. 
 In the brilliant interiors, behind the windows, men 
 with carefully tied cravats are comfortably watching. 
 The people surge up to them; some of them emerge 
 from the flood of humanity, and stand upon the 
 tables. They break nothing, for their irresistible in- 
 solence is appeased by putting their feet where the 
 rich man puts his glass. The strength of these men, 
 as profound as the misery in which they live, presses 
 but lightly against the walls of the great houses. 
 These walls would totter to the ground if they so 
 wished it, but they pass on, with torches and flags, 
 towards their hovels and their factories.
 
 145 
 
 The waiters emerge from the restaurants to wipe 
 off the tables, and the outraged rich men listen to the 
 distant song of the Flemish working people, re-enter- 
 ing their dark streets and wretched dwellings.
 
 BOXERS 
 
 THE square boxing-ring, closed in by ropes, was as 
 white as a bone in the sun, beneath the glare that 
 came down from the arc-lights. Upon the tiers of 
 the amphitheatre, six thousand heads, in widening cir- 
 cles, made whitish lines upon the dark background of 
 clothing. At the foot of this closely-packed hill of 
 men, there was a dazzling ring of plutocrats, sitting on 
 the 25o-franc chairs. Lord Youngston, just arrived 
 from London, nodded to M. Prat-Hugo, whose days 
 were passed in watching horse-races and prize-fights. 
 He was always seen, either sitting or standing, at 
 every exhibition of physical exercise, and he was called 
 The Sportsman. He was one of Lord Youngston's 
 intimates, when they met on occasions like this, and 
 the Englishman welcomed him and spoke a few words 
 literally translated into French: 
 
 " Je crois que Pedlar Lawn aura le meilleur de Jef 
 Youno." 
 
 Lord Youngston stood with his back against the 
 platform; his arms were hanging at his sides, and his 
 clean-shaven face was devoid of expression. His head 
 was touching the lowest of the ropes, which were en- 
 cased in linen to prevent the boxers from bruising their 
 
 146
 
 BOXERS 147 
 
 skin on the bare hemp. Towels were hanging in two 
 opposite corners of the ring. 
 
 The people pouring into the amphitheatre made a 
 noise like waves breaking on a beach, and M. Prat- 
 Hugo said of the crowd: 
 
 " We are getting very sporty, very. Really! " 
 
 He bowed so low, to greet some ladies, that he 
 almost squeaked when he straightened up again; then 
 he shook hands with a young man with a scab on one 
 of his ears, who was, he said, "Our white hope, 
 middle-weight." 
 
 This anglicising of the French language did not 
 tempt Lord Youngston to carry on a very lively con- 
 versation. He stood there in an attitude that betrayed 
 his title and his profession of officer in the Indian 
 Army, and sedately watched the white-sweatered 
 seconds. 
 
 Mac Ofcourse, Jef Youno's man of business, greeted 
 Lord Youngston, who shook hands with him. His 
 face was fat and very red, and, having once been 
 the Scotch heavy-weight champion, his shoulders, one 
 of which was higher than the other, were still well 
 developed. His present occupation allowed him to 
 fill his stomach with dark beer and red meat, and, 
 since he had taken to wearing evening dress, he was 
 nicknamed Lord Soho-Square. He questioned Lord 
 Youngston: 
 
 " Have you put anything on at ten to four? "
 
 i 4 8 PEOPLE 
 
 " I hope," replied Lord Youngston, " that it will be 
 a jolly match." 
 
 Fresh lamps blazed forth in the constellation above, 
 and the crowd thundered out cheer after cheer, for 
 Pedlar Lawn and Jef Youno had entered the ring. 
 Pedlar was wearing a filthy bath-robe, and Jef had 
 thrown his black overcoat over his shoulders, which 
 left his calves uncovered. The two men sat down, 
 each in his corner, and pushed their plaster-bound 
 hands into four-ounce gloves, held out by the seconds. 
 One of Jef Youno 's was a Negro. 
 
 The boxers pushed the stuffing of the gloves as far 
 as possible towards their wrists, in order to unarm 
 their fists, and the referee made a face as though he 
 had eaten something he didn't like. He went to the 
 middle of the ring and shouted: 
 
 "Twenty rounds of three minutes, four-ounce 
 gloves; between Jef Youno, one hundred and forty-six 
 pounds, five ounces, American, and Pedlar Lawn, one 
 hundred and forty-six pounds, four ounces, English. 
 
 "To my right, Jef Youno. 
 
 "To my left, Pedlar Lawn." 
 
 A mist of clapping hands rose from the crowd. The 
 boxers were naked except for the necessary flap, red 
 for Jef and white for Pedlar, and each wore the flag 
 of his country as a belt. They stood in the middle 
 of the ring, while the referee reminded them of the 
 rules in a low voice. Their bodies looked like two
 
 BOXERS 149 
 
 white columns, from which hung their arms and 
 brown-gloved fists. No knotty muscles were to be 
 seen; only their full shoulders and their necks, where 
 the skin was stretched smoothly over the firm flesh, 
 gave evidence of their strength. They went back to 
 their stools, and the order, " Seconds out," soon left 
 them alone in the ring, each sitting calmly in his 
 corner, and seemingly oblivious of the other. At the 
 stroke of the gong they got up, and the seconds 
 reached in and took away the stools. Pedlar Lawn 
 was first in the middle of the ring, dancing about on 
 his toes, and Jef Youno advanced deliberately. 
 Pedlar came forward two steps to meet him, and the 
 two men feinted to draw out unguarded replies, each 
 watching for the chance to catch the other napping. 
 
 Pedlar's left struck out quick as a shot, reaching 
 Jef's forehead. The floor was like a drum under their 
 feet, whose rapid blows upon it were like heavy pearls 
 falling from a broken necklace. Jef got it again full 
 in his smiling face, and drew back, but he suddenly 
 crouched, planting his feet firmly, and opposed his 
 shoulder to Pedlar's onslaught. Then he let Pedlar 
 have it full in the stomach, causing him to lurch for- 
 ward slightly. The two men, cheek to cheek, and fore- 
 arm against forearm, seemed to be embracing one 
 another, and the referee ordered them apart and 
 walked between them. Jef tied himself into a knot, 
 but Pedlar caught him on the chin, and imprisoned
 
 150 PEOPLE 
 
 his right arm under his own left. This manoeuvre 
 was so rapid that it got by the referee, and Jef, stag- 
 gering, received Pedlar's two fists in quick succession, 
 drew back towards his corner, and put his gloves up 
 in front of his smiling countenance. Suddenly he bent 
 over again to receive Pedlar's attack, but the gong 
 sounded the end of the round. The crowd clapped 
 vigorously, and a lady got up from one of the 250- 
 franc chairs to wave her white glove at Jef. The 
 seconds applied wet sponges, and fanned their men 
 with towels, as they sat breathing heavily, with their 
 arms stretched out along the ropes. 
 
 A great buzzing of voices rose up after the ap- 
 plause; M. Prat-Hugo was very excited: 
 
 " Too much close fighting. The referee doesn't 
 interfere enough." 
 
 This was the opinion of Lord Youngston, who began 
 to hold forth slowly and in perfect French: 
 
 " This is very ugly! The Americans have debased 
 the noble art of boxing. Their fighters try to wrestle 
 with their fists. Old prints show us the champions 
 of Queen Anne's time, with their ears split by well- 
 judged blows delivered at arm's length. In the reign 
 of Queen Victoria they preferred direct blows, aimed 
 from a distance; thrusts. Boxing is the play of the 
 fists. The Americans have invented in-fighting; they 
 clinch and pound one another. Close fighting, with 
 nothing but blows with the bent arm, is quite un-
 
 BOXERS 151 
 
 graceful. It isn't Boxing! In-fighting is to boxing 
 'what the knife is to the sword." 
 
 One of Pedlar Lawn's trainers was talking to him 
 in a low voice. The boxer leaned his smooth white 
 face towards him, and he seemed to be sneering. 
 
 At the stroke of the gong, the gladiators stepped 
 nimbly to the centre of the ring. Upon meeting they 
 took positions of defence, the left fist advanced, offer- 
 ing a threat that was not carried out. They moved 
 about as though turning on the same axis, and their 
 bodies were like bent bows about to be released. They 
 each made little strategic attacks, always dodged by 
 the other, and no blows were dealt. The crowd roared 
 out its impatience. Then Jef stopped smiling and 
 seemed to be about to attack in earnest. 
 
 Accustomed to this facial trick, Pedlar leapt for- 
 ward, but Jef made a sideways movement of the head 
 from the exact spot where the blow would pass, and 
 replied heavily with his left into Pedlar's stomach. 
 Lord Youngston was about to applaud this fine feat, 
 when Pedlar pitched into Jef with both fists, and the 
 two hammered one another, beating the floor with their 
 heels. The crowd, excited by such brutal procedure, 
 thundered its approval. Jef's face was covered with 
 blood, but he was still smiling, as he sank upon one 
 knee. The referee counted the seconds, and the lady 
 with white gloves leaned forward with her mouth open. 
 M. Prat-Hugo sat with his knees pressed tight to-
 
 152 PEOPLE 
 
 gether, biting his left thumb-nail, and some Americans 
 in evening dress cheered the man who was wearing the 
 flag of their country about his waist. 
 
 At the eighth second, Jef got up and drew back, 
 with his gloves in front of his resigned smile. Pedlar, 
 continuing his attack, followed him closely, and his 
 busy fists left pink marks on Jef's skin. The gong 
 sounded just as his back touched the ropes. 
 
 A roar of applause filled the amphitheatre again, 
 and the dust, beaten out of the floor by the stamping 
 of feet, rose up like mist towards the arc-lights above. 
 The two gladiators seated themselves again in the 
 angles formed by the ropes, laid their arms along the 
 white linen casings, and submitted themselves breath- 
 lessly to the ministrations of the seconds, who squirted 
 cold water upon them with their own mouths. Jef 
 closed his eyes, and Mac Ofcourse rubbed his joints 
 with some sort of resinous ointment. M. Prat-Hugo 
 was beside himself with enthusiasm: 
 
 " What magnificent fighting! " 
 
 Lord Youngston spoke with care: 
 
 " It isn't what we see that I admire; it's the fine 
 head-work behind it all! The Yankee fights with his 
 fists only, but he's playing an elaborate game. Pedlar 
 Lawn puts too much drive into it, and loses his breath. 
 I can't go and tell him this. It wouldn't be fair." 
 Then he stated one of the laws of straight fighting: 
 "Let the men fight their own fight."
 
 BOXERS 153 
 
 The gong brought Jef slowly to his feet, smiling 
 tenaciously. Pedlar's white face accentuated the red- 
 ness of his swollen right eyelid. He came forward 
 quickly, with the idea of planting his right firmly over 
 Jef 's heart. The latter took it with his elbow, lowered 
 just in time, and, seeing Pedlar's left foot between his 
 two feet, he fixed it to the floor with his right one, so 
 as to pound his chin. This was soon stopped by the 
 referee, who passed between them; and Pedlar, far 
 from being overwhelmed by it, was only the more 
 anxious for his revenge. He set out furiously to ob- 
 tain it, and in the tight knot which their bodies now 
 made, he pounded Jef's face with his head, and be- 
 laboured his stomach with his elbow. Jef tried to 
 get close to him and hold down his arms, after each 
 order of the referee; he obeyed these and left his man, 
 but then pounced back upon him. They kept on 
 giving it to each other in the loins with the right fist, 
 and some people shouted to Pedlar: 
 
 " Break away! " 
 
 He tried to, but failed, always persistently hugged 
 by Jef, who managed to escape Pedlar's finishing 
 stroke. The gong sounded, and there was an ova- 
 tion for Pedlar. Jef's eyes were closed, and he 
 seemed lifeless in the hands of the seconds, who 
 sponged him down with cold water. The chests of 
 both men rose and fell with great rapidity, and 
 Lord Youngston smiled faintly as he noticed that
 
 154 PEOPLE 
 
 Pedlar, almost victorious, was breathing faster than 
 Jef. 
 
 The signal brought the combatants to their feet; 
 the seconds sprayed their backs with water, squirting 
 it from their mouths, and Jef shook his shoulders as 
 though it had waked him up. Pedlar was upon him 
 in a jiffy, raining ineffectual blows; then Jef got busy, 
 and the two men closed in without further prelim- 
 inary. Their fists struck hard at close range, and 
 there was no drawing back or lifting of shoulders to 
 show that either of them was getting too much of it. 
 Pedlar's rage increased as he watched Jef's smiling 
 resignation, for he could not accomplish that final 
 stroke. He hammered ceaselessly with his right and 
 with his left: then suddenly, both arms fell to his 
 sides; Jef, quick as lightning, had drawn back and 
 landed him one under the jaw, which lifted him off 
 the floor, and, before Pedlar could raise his arms again, 
 Jef snapped back like a spring, and repeated the dose. 
 Pedlar fell to his knees and the referee counted the 
 seconds over his bent head. At the ninth, he stood 
 up and the crowd cheered wildly, but, stretching out 
 his left, he backed away from Jef and took the classic 
 guard: head back, right fist over the pit of his 
 stomach, and left held shoulder high. Jef smiled, 
 seemingly afraid to drive home his victory, and 
 Pedlar rushed at him, but Jef plunged beneath the 
 wildly waving arms of his desperate adversary and
 
 BOXERS 155 
 
 gave it to him again under the jaw. Then, with his 
 chin pushed out, and breathing so heavily that it 
 seemed to burst like a bomb in his mouth, he struck 
 like lightning with his left, through the waving arms, 
 and arrived with the whole weight of his body: one 
 hundred and forty-six pounds five ounces on Pedlar's 
 chest. The vanquished Englishman, deprived of his 
 last breath, toppled over flat on his back, with his 
 arms stretched out, and Jef stepped back and leaned 
 upon the ropes, with the air of a man who knows he 
 has done his work. The prostrate body in the middle 
 of the ring looked like a white crucifixion. The 
 referee counted the tenth second, and the smooth- 
 faced Americans in evening dress leapt from their 
 seats, shouting vociferously with their big mouths, and 
 pushed their way roughly towards the ring, where Jef's 
 seconds were holding him triumphantly on their shoul- 
 ders. Two of the most luxuriously dressed among 
 them added their support to the victor; and the 
 woman with the white gloves threw kisses at him, and 
 let out little squeals of delight, for she had put her 
 money on him. Amid the uproar of hand-clapping, 
 yelling, and stamping of feet, Lord Youngston held 
 forth to M. Prat-Hugo: 
 
 " Jef let Pedlar have too much confidence in him- 
 self, and this confidence lost him the fight. A man 
 must never imagine too soon that he is going to win, 
 for it sets the mind at rest; and a man who makes
 
 156 PEOPLE 
 
 no mental effort is lost. Jef allowed his face to get 
 knocked about, in order to have a triumphant man 
 before him, and nothing comes to grief so quickly as 
 a triumphant man. He has not only a physical beat- 
 ing to undergo, but also the blighting of his hopes. 
 Jef used his powers of endurance in dealing with 
 Pedlar, and it was a mental victory. After the second 
 blow he had only Pedlar's body to push about. The 
 best men never jump to victorious conclusions; and 
 anyone who decides that the fight is his is done for. 
 Man has no worse enemy than contentment." 
 
 Seated upon the shoulders of his howling country- 
 men, Jef basked in the brief and furious glory ac- 
 corded to prize-fighters, and the great electric globes 
 shone down upon him thoughtfully, like the stars.
 
 A BOURBON'S PLEASURES 
 
 His Royal Highness Gaston, due d'Orleans, was on 
 board his yacht La Maroussia. It was at Seville, near 
 the decagonal Torre del Oro, tied up to the Guadal- 
 quivir orange docks. The water grew bluer as the 
 sun rose in the heavens, and at noon the flaming river 
 was like enamel in a hot furnace. The palm-trees, 
 flourishing beneath the pitiless glare which drove 
 everyone to shelter, only offered little patches of 
 shade, but in the evening their shadows reached far 
 out over the tired water. 
 
 In the calle de las Sierpes, Pierre Roumieu had a 
 French pastry shop, where fancy cakes, with or with- 
 out icing, could be had, and there he learned Spanish: 
 Bunuelos, Rejrescos. He loved to sit by the water's 
 edge, when his day's work was finished, and the pros- 
 titutes who came over the Triana bridge smiled at 
 him, for he brought them stale bread and other 
 leavings: 
 
 " What you got for me? " And he replied with an 
 exaggerated description of the surprises he had in his 
 pockets for them all. 
 
 He couldn't legally go back into France, for the 
 157
 
 158 PEOPLE 
 
 simple reason/ according to his own story, that he 
 was a deserter. But there were other things that peo- 
 ple didn't know about. 
 
 He wore the tight trousers of a torero, but his jacket 
 was French, and the embroidered plastron covering 
 his well-developed chest kept his beautiful red satin 
 necktie in place, from his soft white collar down to 
 his belt. For the women of Triana he was Andalusian, 
 but he looked it only when in his shirt sleeves. In 
 spite of his numerous amusements, he admitted to 
 only one rather unobliging friend. For every step 
 ahead, she took three backwards, especially if one 
 begged her to hurry: a fine mule, with red rosettes, 
 who carried oranges down to the docks. She always 
 planted herself in front of Roumieu's shop, and stayed 
 there until he brought out her afternoon tea of almond 
 paste. 
 
 Roumieu looked as though he might be a cousin of 
 Lopito, the mule-driver, on account of his flat hat and 
 his habit of shaving Spanish fashion, but they were 
 alike only when silent. When the Andalusian spoke, 
 his crooked mouth moved in an otherwise inflexibly 
 pious Catholic face. Roumieu, who came from the 
 department of the Var, always kept a smile ready, as 
 though it were just under his skin. 
 
 The horn handle of a steel blade was sticking out 
 of the mule-driver's belt. Roumieu said that 
 this capable knife had put an end to Domingo
 
 A BOURBON'S PLEASURES 159 
 
 Lesdeno's earning four pesetas a day by killing, 
 skinning, and selling one bullock, six sheep, and 
 twenty-four young goats. No one knew the beginning 
 of this terrible affair, but the result had been seen: 
 Lopito had pinioned the butcher's arm to the door, 
 and then, in order to commit further outrage, he had 
 withdrawn his knife. Covering the crucified man's 
 face with his cloak, he had disembowelled him, as 
 easily as a pious woman opens her prayer-book with 
 a hairpin. Lifting out the intestines, and putting 
 them into a handkerchief, Lopito had said: 
 
 "Saint Peter is well avenged! " 
 
 Roumieu was great friends with this good Christian, 
 who was grateful to the Orleans -family for the job 
 of carting their oranges down to the docks from the 
 park of San Telmo a little business for which the 
 due de Montpensier had been nicknamed: El 
 naranjero. 
 
 The mule-driver pointed to ;the yacht and said:; 
 
 "Elrey." 
 
 The pastry-cook agreed. 
 
 " Sobre el agua" 
 
 The due d'Orleans came to see his grandmother, 
 the duchesse de Montpensier, Infanta of Spain, 
 invested with many-coloured robes in her devotional 
 palacio by the Abbe Juan Episcopo. This dignitary 
 reeked with tobacco, and had taken to live with him, 
 ostensibly from the highest motives, a broad-backed,
 
 160 PEOPLE 
 
 dark-haired wench whose skin at least was very 
 Catholic, owing to the rubbing of scapularies. 
 
 Dislike of travelling alone obliged His Highness 
 Gaston d'Orleans to surround himself with lively 
 women, to whom, he offered riding as a change from 
 yachting; and this was why, on that April day, at 
 the time of the Fina, he foun4 himself with a broken 
 leg beneath his horse, to the horror of his friend. She 
 had to dismount from her own horse without help, and 
 send forth scream after scream in her beautiful 
 operatic soprano; and her distress over His injured 
 Majesty lasted for a long time in the open prairie 
 land, with its cactus and vast unbroken stretches. 
 She dropped all her combs, and shrieked and per- 
 spired until the peasants came to bear away the 
 injured King upon a stretcher. 
 
 The fact that he was taken to a hotel in Madrid, 
 and not to the family palace, was an offence to his 
 grandmother, whose priests and chamberlains pre- 
 vented her from visiting her grandson in such unbe- 
 fitting surroundings. An infanta of Spain could not 
 risk meeting, at a public tavern, ladies who went on 
 pleasure cruises, even though they did only stand at 
 the edge of the bed. 
 
 The departure was finally arranged, after much 
 palavering on the part of important personages, and 
 His Highness Gaston was carried to San Telmo, 
 where he consoled himself, by consuming souffle
 
 A BOURBON'S PLEASURES 161 
 
 potatoes, for the reproach that his conduct in semana 
 santa was too scandalously vulgar. He remembered 
 his royal destiny, and stuck a red carnation between 
 two of the toes of his incapacitated foot. 
 
 Pierre Roumieu supplied His bruised Majesty with 
 pastry, and he became friends with M. Jean Baudet, 
 who made a good thing out of his job of valet to His 
 Highness. M. Jean did not forget Pierre, and the 
 pastry-cook, who knew his way about, helped him 
 to speak to the pretty ladies who cried " Nino! 
 Chiquillo! " from behind the wrought iron grilles of 
 the houses, where there were gay carnations on the 
 window sills and in the black hair of the girls smok- 
 ing cigarettes. All those who earned their living in 
 Seville knew the yacht; and, with bent forefingers, 
 and eyes that twinkled beneath their shawls, the 
 dancers from the Place San Fernando, clacking their 
 castanets and biting the stem of a flower, called out 
 for el rey. Other more determined women came down 
 to the docks and loudly demanded their money from 
 the licentious King of France in his palatial craft 
 that floated among the rotten oranges on the 
 Guadalquivir. 
 
 M. Jean broke off his acquaintance with Roumieu 
 as soon as he could, and attended to the provisioning 
 of the yacht unaided. The pastry-cook looked for him 
 every evening, in order to administer a well-deserved 
 reproach. Last night there was a pearly white ring
 
 162 PEOPLE 
 
 around the moon, and I met him in the streets, vainly 
 searching. 
 
 " The due d'Orleans," he said, " looks like the due 
 de Bordeaux." And he sang, 
 
 " Le due de Bordeaux 
 Ressemble a son pere,, 
 Son pere a so. mere, 
 Sa mere a mon dos," 
 
 as we walked along together to No. 8, calle Santa 
 Maria, to see Mme. Roustan, of the French colony. 
 This lady, who smoked a great deal and drank quite 
 enough, had acquired strong Catholic beliefs and a 
 taste of uncleanliness from her long stay in Spain. 
 The tips of her ringers touched Holy Water and no 
 other, but she promised to find, in that bathless town, 
 some white-skinned girls who washed themselves from 
 head to foot, English fashion. 
 
 Encarnacion, a terra-cotta enameller from La 
 Cartuja, spoke to Pierre caressingly: 
 
 " Hijo de mi alma" She was sitting on the wooden 
 staircase, with her elbows on her knees, and her 
 flower-decked head in her hands. On the cool stones 
 of the courtyard, her feet were beating the rhythm of 
 the dance she had just finished. Then her comrade 
 Concepcion came down the stairs, clapping her hands 
 together like cymbals, and threw us the flowers from
 
 A BOURBON'S PLEASURES 163 
 
 her hair and some leaves from the shrubs in the court. 
 Pierre swore, and she took some water from the foun- 
 tain. Then she held up the lamp to light the stairway 
 for us. 
 
 They were proud of their dainty chemises which had 
 been worn by Mme. la comtesse de Paris at her 
 chateau at San Lucar. In spite of his housemaids, 
 His Highness sold the odds and ends from the ward- 
 robe to old-clothes dealers in Seville. 
 
 Mme. Roustan brought in some anchovies in salt- 
 petre from La Manzanilla, and delighted Pierre with 
 her maledictions: 
 
 "What a filthy brute to have for a king! " 
 
 Suddenly she began to deliver herself on the subject 
 of the Orleans family: 
 
 " The only thing that interests them is their own 
 gain. What they did in 1872 was nothing but that: 
 to ask for sixty millions at the very moment when 
 the country had to pay five thousand millions. They 
 said to themselves, ' France won't be swallowed up 
 without us.' They couldn't get what they wanted be- 
 fore the Prussians, but they got it right away after- 
 wards. I gave all the wine I had left to the soldiers 
 of my country. When the due de Montpensier fought 
 here with Henri de Bourbon, he did it because he 
 knew he would gain by his death. The Orleans let 
 the Bourbon die like a dog at the Carabanchel duelling 
 ground."
 
 164 PEOPLE 
 
 Encarnacion clacked her castanets and sang: 
 
 " Los ninos de Carabanchel." 
 
 Her head moved as though she were dancing, and 
 Pierre took down the guitar. 
 
 The staff of the watchman came tapping along on 
 the pavement, and the sound of his voice gave one a 
 feeling of tranquillity: 
 
 " Go to sleep, it's one o'clock." 
 
 Encarnacion looked up at the sky, that sparkled 
 with diamonds, then she yawned and smiled at Pierre 
 childishly: 
 
 " Won't you sleep while I sleep? " 
 
 On the second of February, 1897, the Spanish artil- 
 lery fired off a salute in the passages of Las Delicias 
 for the death of Her Royal Highness Madame la 
 duchesse de Montpensier. The olive-skinned gunners 
 switched the children with mule-drivers' whips for 
 coming too near, and stopped another crowd of chil- 
 dren following a cow destined for the butcher's knife. 
 The beast was being prodded with pointed sticks and 
 the blood flowed. A young gunner who was more 
 thrilled by being an espartero than with the order to 
 "Fire! " shouted to the children: " Anda! Hombre! 
 La Muertet" 
 
 Encarnacion glided by like a garlanded ship, with
 
 A BOURBON'S PLEASURES 165 
 
 her mantilla caught up on her high comb, and flowers 
 in her hair. Que graciosa! She gave us the greeting 
 of her country: 
 
 " God be with you." 
 
 The Abbe Juan Episcopo came running up to them; 
 the guns had been fired too soon. Oxygen-tanks were 
 giving the Infanta a few more hours of suffering, and 
 she was just conscious enough to speak, when she 
 heard the noise of the firing: 
 
 " Not yet." 
 
 Perhaps she was thinking of her last illness. Her 
 recovery from it had begun with astonishment at see- 
 ing so many empty drawers. The head housemaid, 
 Teodora, had been obliged to reply: 
 
 " Madame la comtesse de Paris thought that God 
 would call her to him." 
 
 The gunners were now able to repeat their salute, 
 and since the Duchess had desired to be buried as a 
 nun, her corpse, according to the rules of the order, 
 was clothed in brown cloth, and a tight white cap was 
 placed on the wizened head. Then it was laid upon 
 the flagging of the palace chapel as though the Infanta 
 had fallen there, stone-dead. 
 
 The humility of her burial was quite in keeping 
 with the piety and simplicity of this great lady, and 
 the unpopularity of her husband, prince d'Orleans, 
 was obliterated, in this country of beggars, by en- 
 thusiastic praises for the Benefactress,
 
 166 PEOPLE 
 
 The louse-covered gipsy-women who camped at La 
 Macarena called her Nuestra Madre, and when she 
 passed by they crossed themselves with one hand and 
 stretched out the other. 
 
 tying there upon the stone floor, she seemed to 
 have grown taller, and the flowing line of her slender 
 body was broken only in two places: at the crucifix 
 clasped on her breast by fingers which bore a single 
 silver ring, and at her nose which was sharply attenu- 
 ated by Death. 
 
 Servants kept the people in order as they filed past. 
 There was Mme. Roustan, then Encarnacion with lace 
 at her wrists from the dead woman's drawers, and 
 some gipsy-men and toreros, then the children who 
 had wearied of plaguing the cow, and the officer who 
 had ordered the premature salute. 
 
 Rows of candles burned upon the altars. 
 
 The royal will contained other clauses besides the 
 one concerning the manner of burial. Money had 
 been left to the Holy Church at San Telmo, and there 
 was great perturbation among the members of the 
 family. Representations were made at once to the 
 ecclesiastical authorities regarding the illegality of this 
 attempt upon the Orleans fortune. 
 
 The Archbishop gave them his blessing, and the 
 family, with a great appearance of filial affection, 
 began to look piously around for mementoes of their 
 grandmother. It was easy to see why the silver ring
 
 A BOURBON'S PLEASURES 167 
 
 was the only thing left on her hands: the finger would 
 have had to be cut off to get it. The great wrought 
 iron grille at the palace entrance, with its polished 
 copper knobs, filled the princes with emotion: "It is 
 an heirloom! " 
 
 Their affection for their grandmother was more 
 easily satisfied in the Salon de Columnas, which was 
 full of heavy objects of priceless beauty and composi- 
 tion. These were carried out with an agility quite 
 remarkable in people who were not movers by trade. 
 Who got the big ivory Christ? Under whose arms 
 would those valuable vases disappear? And which 
 member of this noble race would take those gem-set 
 swords from the armoury, forgetful of their glorious 
 blades? 
 
 The nail from the Holy Cross, a mere piece of iron 
 in a crystal case, remained untouched, as well as the 
 Pope's white cap, obtained by the Duchess. She had 
 knelt before him as a pilgrim, and, after a handsome 
 gift to the Holy Church, had asked: "Might I have 
 a souvenir of Your Holiness? " Her reward had been 
 this thing worth thirty sous. 
 
 The housemaids prayed and wept, and they bowed 
 low to Amelie of Portugal, who walked past with her 
 head erect. Her hands were empty, for she was a 
 queen. Then the chapel bell put an end to the pillag- 
 ing, and the priests, beneficiaries under the dead 
 woman's will, proceeded with the funeral service, turn-
 
 i68 PEOPLE 
 
 ing the Holy Sacrament towards the family, who 
 piously inclined their calculating heads. 
 
 When the due d'Orleans was well again, he met his 
 helpful friend, the singer, at the Savoy Hotel in 
 London. His relish for her and patatas, now be- 
 come souffle potatoes, kept him hi good spirits, but 
 Jean Baudet complained on behalf of His Highness 
 that they were not as nicely puffed out as at San 
 Telmo, because they were partially cooked long hi 
 advance. 
 
 The stifling hotel kitchen was on the same floor as 
 the cool restaurant, and when their work was done 
 the weary cooks regaled themselves by peeping through 
 the cracks in the screens at the pompous lords and 
 their dazzling companions enjoying their dinner. His 
 Highness's blond beard was very noticeable with so 
 many clean-shaven faces about him. 
 
 The old glutton had to suspend his preparations for 
 the throne to receive an agent of the due d'Aumale, 
 the bearer of an order to break with his singer, under 
 penalty of being disinherited. In the kitchen, the 
 howler predicted what would happen. This well- 
 educated Frenchman, who had come down to the job 
 of howler in a cosmopolitan restaurant, had lost his 
 money, but not his experience or his good-nature. He 
 bet ten to one with Raymond, the old white-bearded 
 larder-man : 
 
 " The duke will get rid of his lady in the presence
 
 A BOURBON'S PLEASURES 169 
 
 of M. d'Aumale's messenger, and without her he would 
 have been a dead man, grilled by the sun on that 
 -Spanish prairie. He won't hesitate! When an 
 Orleans has to choose between money and the well- 
 being of a woman or of his country, it is always the 
 money." 
 
 He won, and the following night the cantatrice 
 stood outside the door, which had been slammed in 
 her face, and hammered it like a street urchin: a 
 fitting reply to the princely treatment she had re- 
 ceived. The Swiss manager came to see who was 
 there, taking his time as usual, and told the lady to 
 be off at once. 
 
 The next morning, old R'aymond threw off the fol- 
 lowing opinions, while engaged in his noisy job of 
 splitting bones: 
 
 " Vive la Commune! She was a nice little thing, 
 and she gave what he asked for. I'm poor, but I'm 
 always polite with women. We can't all be Orleanses. 
 Oh, what a lot of tails there are that never get kicked! "
 
 THE JOY BOYS 
 
 ON the third of October, at ten-thirty in the morning, 
 a hundred men of the 26th Light Infantry, resting 
 their rifles upon their green epaulets, went into 48 ter, 
 Boulevard de Bercy. It was the freight depot of the 
 P. L. M. Railway. Ten minutes after their rapid 
 entrance, fifty foot-solders with polished buttons came 
 in and piled their rifles against the railing. Behind 
 it some dray-horses were struggling to keep their feet 
 on the slimy cobblestones. Twelve surly municipal 
 guards came next, looking enormous with their shakos' 
 and their thick covers slung over their shoulders; then 
 twenty policemen from the Twelfth Arrondissement 
 took up random positions on the pavement. 
 
 People stopped, and asked: 
 
 " What's going on? " 
 
 " It's the Joy Boys goin' off," said a barrel-maker 
 in a jute apron. " That's not like it used to be. They 
 used to bring 'em in a bunch from the Reuilly bar- 
 racks, with fixed bayonets. They made more noise 
 'n a lot o' stewed women. Now, they comes one by 
 one. It keeps 'em calm. Those guys won't make no 
 noise; they'll kick up no fuss." 
 
 170
 
 THE JOY BOYS 171 
 
 Uninterested, he went off to his work, and the other 
 people in the street, being of the working class too, 
 had no time to stand watching for long, so after a 
 moment or two passed down the boulevard. At this 
 point, it sinks to a low level between the pavements, 
 and is crossed by an iron bridge just to the left of the 
 station entrance. The noise of the trains, running 
 over the joints in the tracks, drowned the words of 
 three journalists standing near the policemen. But 
 no one wanted to hear what they were saying. 
 
 One of the reporters, who had a brown goatee, 
 spotted the first Joy Boy with a friend whose white 
 knapsack weighed down one of his shoulders and kept 
 knocking against his back. When the recruit spied the 
 policemen, he shied, and turned away his bull-dog jaw. 
 Then the two sour-looking individuals padded off in 
 their blue-laced slippers in the opposite direction. 
 Heads downward, they went to console themselves 
 with a glass of white wine, with other Joy Boys and 
 their companions, who were noiselessly consuming 
 small bitter drinks at a nearby table. 
 
 A boy in a blue smock, with eyes open and mouth 
 closed, sat stupidly between two women, whose short 
 hair proved that they had just come out of the hos- 
 pital. Near him sat a clownish-looking fellow who 
 seemed to be in a terrible temper. He wore a black 
 jersey, and had buttoned his fur-collared overcoat 
 across his shoulders. A dark-haired woman in black
 
 i?2 PEOPLE 
 
 silk sat beside him, and kept their two glasses full? 
 and her face, which already betrayed weariness with 
 her obvious occupation, grew paler at the thought of 
 the impending separation. Her lover had his arm 
 around her neck, and his big idle hand hung down 
 over her ample bosom. 
 
 In front of the next restaurant, another group oc- 
 cupied a table soaked with the wine spilling con- 
 stantly from the glasses in their trembling hands. An 
 old woman, and three younger ones from a work-room, 
 faced four men whose elbows were solidly planted 
 upon the liquid surface of the table. One of the men, 
 in a blue ironworker's smock, but yellow shoes, was 
 softly playing an accordion, and the old woman's tears 
 fell rapidly as she listened to it. The younger 
 women's eyes were red, and they hung their heads 
 dolefully. 
 
 Two light infantrymen brought in the canteens of 
 their squad to be filled with wine, and a tall man with 
 grey hair, carrying a brand new valise, offered to treat 
 them to coffee if they would look after the youngster 
 with him: 
 
 " I wish you'd take this lad inside." 
 
 The soldiers stopped corking the cloth-covered can- 
 teens, and looked at the youth: voluptuous pink on 
 his round cheeks; brown eyes, lengthened out by blue- 
 pencilled lines at the outer corners; thick lips; and a 
 receding chin. He was seated at a table, drinking,
 
 THE JOY BOYS 173 
 
 with a little brunette, who was smiling the fixed, stupid 
 smile of a timid child. 
 
 " Sure thing. He better go in," said one of the sol- 
 diers. " They're called for, any time before ten. It's 
 striking now." 
 
 The tall man's head just missed the gas-fixture as 
 he turned to call: 
 
 "Come along, Maurice! " 
 
 Maurice hesitated; he was listening to the rest of 
 the recruits, whose despair had not been mitigated by 
 the wine they had drunk: 
 
 " It's yer last throw, young fella." 
 
 But he went off in spite of them, for the little 
 brunette, still smiling timidly, had given him a 
 shove. 
 
 Fresh tables were being arranged on the pavement, 
 for the expected crowd of gloomy Joy Boys and their 
 dismal companions. No laughter was to be heard 
 anywhere, and the policemen walked ba:k and forth 
 like watch-dogs guarding a pack of taiTjd wolves. 
 
 The tall man stooped to say good-bye, near the 
 bench where the reporters waited in vain for some- 
 thing sensational to happen. One of them, who was 
 wearing a green felt hat, attempted to interview 
 him: 
 
 " Your son doesn't look as if he belonged here." 
 
 " He isn't my son. His mother asked me to bring 
 him here. He had meningitis when he was a child,
 
 174 PEOPLE 
 
 and now when he takes a drink he goes completely 
 off his head. I wish he'd go in; I've got to be at the 
 Gare du Nord at eleven." 
 
 The reporter and the boy with the pencilled eye- 
 lids looked each other over. They both had the same 
 insolent expression, and were dressed with equal 
 flashiness. The reporter wore a red cravat and a 
 checked shirt, wishing to be taken for a sportsman, 
 and somehow one had an undefinable impression of 
 their similarity. The youth addressed the journalist 
 in the dialect of his forebears, as though the latter 
 were claiming relationship: 
 
 " None of your nonsense. I've worked for Moray." 
 
 The reporter hadn't the faintest idea what he was 
 talking about, but laughed, nevertheless, for his calling 
 obliged him to wear the mask of infinite knowledge. 
 
 " I believe you've been to number forty-seven, down 
 the boulevard! " exclaimed the Joy Boy. 
 
 The man who had to be at the Gare du Nord at 
 eleven continued his elucidation of this extraordinary 
 personality: 
 
 " When he has 'em like that, he's sure to get into 
 some sort of a mess. He's had four months twice, 
 for getting into scraps, and there were two years when 
 he had to live away from home. It'll make a man 
 of him to go out there. Go on in, Maurice. Your 
 time's up." 
 
 " We'll meet again," said Maurice, " when the class
 
 THE JOY BOYS 175 
 
 comes back." And shouldering his valise, he handed 
 his papers to a non-commissioned officer standing at 
 the entrance. 
 
 A good-looking youth, elegantly dressed, a neces- 
 sary requisite for those who wished to make use of 
 women, passed by, arm in arm with a girl who car- 
 ried his knapsack; then two young men with their two 
 companions, four abreast. The women would have 
 consented to anything, and their bodies could be 
 readily noted beneath carefully chosen dresses. The 
 dragging steps of their escorts at an early hour, and 
 the smartness of their get-up, proclaimed the lazy life 
 of kept men. This care in dressing showed the weak 
 point in their characters; one would have easily taken 
 young men, in blue smocks like theirs, for honest 
 workmen and good fellows, but the working clothes 
 always had a foundation of buttoned shoes. 
 
 An old policeman, No. 256 Xllth, undertook to 
 explain politely to the Joy Boys that the time for 
 parting had come. He succeeded with five of them, 
 who waved their good-byes and disappeared behind 
 the line of soldiers. A gang of sewer-men emerged 
 from a nearby man-hole; their feet were wet and 
 heavy, and they came slowly to positions of rest; one 
 hand upon their dripping scrapers, and the other hold- 
 ing little iron lamps without chimneys. They formu- 
 lated the people's mistrust of law-courts: 
 
 "There's guys has done enough to deserve bein'
 
 176 PEOPLE 
 
 sent off, but they don't get 'em. And the ones that 
 goes ain't done half as much." 
 
 " And what do us fellas get for our hard workin'? " 
 said the last of the gang, drawing an unexplained 
 parallel between his own misfortunes and those of the 
 Joy Boys. Then, realizing that the minutes were 
 flying, they walked off to their unpleasant work. 
 
 The journalists put their heads together, and 
 launched forth upon a lively discussion; they talked 
 at the top of their lungs, desiring to be heard above 
 the noise of the trains clattering over the bridge. One 
 pale young man, with a callous spot on his nose where 
 his glasses rested, squinted his tired eyes and de- 
 clared: 
 
 " France is in a bad way. In order to strengthen 
 the municipal forces, a law was passed on March 21, 
 1905, which provides that only men who have been 
 in prison for at least six months, one or more sen- 
 tences, can be sent to the African Battalion." 
 
 A travelling salesman put down his sample-case and 
 complained: 
 
 "It's shameful! My son's finished all his studies, 
 and now he's garrisoned at Nancy with a lot of 
 mackerels. A nice thing for parents to have their 
 only son landed into a crowd like that, after all the 
 sacrifices we've made to get him a decent education! " 
 
 "It's because he's your only son," said the young 
 man with the bad eyes; " those mackerels take the 
 place of the brothers you didn't give him."
 
 THE JOY BOYS 177 
 
 Another of the journalists pulled vigorously at his 
 little brown beard, as if he wished to ring a bell to 
 announce this observation: 
 
 "What's the difference between a boy of the mid- 
 dle classes who enlists in the Hussars because he's 
 robbed his father, and a Joy Boy who gets sent off 
 to Africa for letting himself get pinched, doing the 
 same thing at two o'clock in the morning? " 
 
 " He doesn't belong to the family," replied the 
 travelling salesman. 
 
 A great flat dray came lumbering along the uneven 
 cobbles, and a little hand-truck which had been in- 
 securely loaded on to it fell into the street. From 
 this crowd, who were supposed to be known for their 
 alacrity to do harm, ten men leapt forward to pick 
 it up and replace it on the dray, thus saving the 
 horses the trouble of stopping and starting again on 
 the slimy stones. 
 
 The journalists at last began to show signs of 
 rejoicing: 
 
 "Ah! Now they're coming! " 
 
 From the boulevard came the sound of Bruant's 
 song: 
 
 " C'est nous les joyeux ..." And they surged 
 up over the empty pavement, dancing and gesticulat- 
 ing. A little old woman was being dragged along 
 between two of them, and their crazy steps shook the 
 spectacles that she was trying to keep in place with
 
 178 PEOPLE 
 
 her bent fingers. Necks, stretched out by the effort 
 of shouting, were often surmounted by heads that 
 looked like animals': anywhere from a rabbit's nose 
 to a boar's snout. A major led the crowd, moving 
 along on bent knees, like a cripple sitting in a bowl, 
 with the agility acquired by long practice at public 
 dances. On seeing the police, they swerved slightly, 
 but sang all the louder, and when they passed under 
 the bridge their heads spun with the echo, and they 
 used up every ounce of strength in their crazed bodies 
 in order to increase the volume of noise. Frenzied 
 yells poured from their twisted mouths, until they 
 reeled with dizziness. They imitated the Major's 
 antics, like so many drunken animals, accentuating 
 each step with a shout. The little old woman was 
 jounced about by her two escorts, and her head wobbled 
 back and forth between their two supporting shoul- 
 ders. Her spectacles dropped into the street, and one 
 could see that her eyes were full of tears. Then they 
 sat down at the table abandoned by the people who 
 had come to say good-bye to the Joy Boy with the 
 accordion. The neck of a bottle of red wine was stick- 
 ing out of one of the men's knapsacks, and he laid his 
 head for a moment on his sobbing mother's shoulder, 
 and then, with quick determined steps, he went 
 through the line of soldiers, which closed in behind 
 him. 
 
 Other Joy Boys followed his example, and left their
 
 THE JOY BOYS 179 
 
 women weeping alone. The prostitutes did not con- 
 cern themselves with the crowd of onlookers, for they 
 had no heart now for their work, and tears rolled 
 down over their faces, distorted by grief. The woman 
 in black silk set them an example of amazing courage: 
 standing very straight against one of the bridge 
 stanchions, she turned a set face towards the police- 
 men; her mouth trembled, and beneath the skin of 
 her neck, bared for professional reasons, one could 
 see that she was swallowing hard; but that was all. 
 
 Near her, an 'old soldier, from one of the African 
 battalions, exemplified the benefits to be derived from 
 African discipline. He was drunk, and from beneath 
 a moth-eaten moustache he slobbered out his scorn for 
 uniforms and authority. There was a gleam of bru- 
 tality in his eyes, and he sneered at the sacred anguish 
 of those mothers with their hands held before their 
 faces. 
 
 An infantry captain had the call sounded up and 
 down the boulevard, and the remaining Joy Boys pre- 
 sented themselves at this last summons. 
 
 On the side where the sign "WALK YOUR 
 HORSES " was hanging, the Company's clerks left 
 their books to watch them coming in. Their orderly 
 souls were horrified at the spectacle of these idle men. 
 They declared: 
 
 " It wouldn't do to meet them at night," and re- 
 turned to their work.
 
 i8o PEOPLE 
 
 A stern officer grouped the recruits in front of the 
 city tolls office, where the customs officials waited, 
 scowling but patient, under shelter of the vines around 
 the doorway. The loss of their freedom calmed the 
 spirits of the Joy Boys, who were dazed by wine, grief, 
 and fear. Their minds contained but one sensation: 
 the dread of impending authority. 
 
 " They're goin' to make us sweat for it," said the 
 one in blue slippers with the bull-dog jaw, conjecturing 
 about their labours of atonement. 
 
 The corporals, who were obliged to be severe in the 
 presence of their superior officers, could be very agree- 
 able when away from them, and they coaxed the Joy 
 Boys now in a most friendly and engaging manner. 
 They knew how useless it would be to try to pacify 
 these sullen individuals with the accepted methods 
 of severity. Some of them were too drunk to fall for 
 this unexpected kindness, and maintained the stubborn 
 attitudes which it had been their intention to adopt. 
 They snapped out surly replies to the soldiers' good- 
 humoured questions: 
 
 "What t'hell d'ye mean? . . . That's no god 
 damn business of yours? ..." 
 
 "Which is it fer you? Algiers? Wait till ye see 
 the women there! " 
 
 An enormous limousine slid softly into the court, 
 and, emitting a hoarse groan from its gleaming brass 
 horn, came to a standstill behind a van containing the
 
 THE JOY BOYS 181 
 
 furniture of M. Hart-Olivier, a rich financier. His 
 agent, M. de Batonnet, an ex-cavalry officer, had ar- 
 rived to superintend the loading of these sumptuous 
 articles, bound for Lugano. Mme. Hart-Olivier, who 
 was honorary president of the S.D.M. (Society for the 
 Diminution of Misery), had decided to spend her 
 winters there. M. de Batonnet ordered the doors of 
 the van to be opened, so that he might make a final 
 inspection of the packing, and one could see pieces 
 of brass and polished wood shining in the obscurity; 
 a massive gilt knob protruded from one of the canvas 
 coverings, and the recruits, intrigued by these riches 
 behind their curtain of straw, edged up as near the 
 van as possible. They longed to set fire to it, for 
 they had an instinctive hatred of the luxury their 
 misery had helped to produce. 
 
 The infantrymen now lined up the Joy Boys in the 
 station guard-house, to have their service papers re- 
 vised by two majors of the Medical Corps. The 
 chronic drunkards, whose craving had become unbear- 
 able, begged for drinks, and, being refused this dis- 
 pensation, they lifted clenched fists, only to drop them 
 again hopelessly. They realized now that this kind 
 of satisfaction was no longer to be indulged in. 
 
 The recruits chewed their cigarettes nervously, and 
 the atmosphere was heavy with smoke and liquor. No 
 one dreamt of opening a window, but several of the 
 men agreed that some of the panes should be broken.
 
 182 PEOPLE 
 
 The noise and fresh air reanimated them with mis- 
 chievous energy, and a volley of empty wine bottles 
 soon demolished the two gas jets, but the sudden 
 entrance of the municipal guards had a calming effect. 
 The recruits were then gently pushed towards the doc- 
 tors, for whom they stripped to the waist. Declara- 
 tions of love and seditious inscriptions were tattooed 
 upon most of the bared chests and backs. The thread- 
 bare " To hell with the police! " surrounded two 
 crossed knives upon the muscular chest of the one 
 with the bull-dog jaw and shifty eyes. 
 
 The doctors, with their stethoscopes and towels, 
 said: " Cough! " and raucous throats barked in 
 reply. 
 
 The accordion player with the yellow shoes took a 
 deep breath and displayed the representation of a 
 pierced heart, and the words: 
 
 " Titine's for life." 
 
 The repeated consecration of bodies to Titine tes- 
 tified to the popularity of this pet name, and upon 
 another, marked by two scars, occurred a verse both 
 socialistic and erotic: 
 
 " My head is for Deibler, 
 The rest for Titine." 
 
 The dignity of the staff-officers, with their gilt
 
 THE JOY BOYS 183 
 
 shoulder-knots, was slightly compromised by a too 
 close scrutiny of these indecorous devices, but they 
 completely regained it by means of curt orders to the 
 recruits, snapped at them from across the room: 
 
 "Examined men! Out this way! " 
 
 Upstairs, in the long mess-room, the municipal 
 guards on duty succeeded in impressing the recruits 
 with the wisdom of complaisance, they were used to 
 handling crowds. Huddled around the windows, the 
 men gazed gloomily out over Paris for the last time, 
 and their minds were filled with regret at the thought 
 of all those wine-shops, without which life would be 
 impossible. 
 
 A recruit who should -have presented himself the 
 day before was severely reprimanded by the cap- 
 tain : 
 
 " Why weren't you here yesterday? " 
 
 "Had too much liquor in me." This was quite 
 obvious, for he could scarcely keep his eyes open, and 
 his baby face was still flushed like ripe fruit an at- 
 tribute highly prized by women. 
 
 " Go round to the boulevard de La Chapelle," said 
 the captain; " they'll tell you what to do." 
 
 Completely mystified, he replied: 
 
 " I'm late already, and if I beats it now, I'll only 
 be later." 
 
 His mind, accustomed to direct answers, was in- 
 capable of encompassing the intricacies of official red
 
 184 PEOPLE 
 
 tape, and he stopped two or three times on his way 
 to the door, lost in meditation, thereby throwing his 
 escort out of step. He begged for their advice: 
 
 " What d'ye think I've got to do? " 
 
 " Keep moving," they told him. 
 
 He wanted to go back again to the officers, but was 
 prevented from doing this, and the troopers said: 
 
 " They told ye what to do, and now they don't want 
 ye messin' about askin' questions." 
 
 He repeated pitifully: 
 
 " Where'll I go? " 
 
 The guard of light infantrymen took up their rifles, 
 and surrounded the Joy Boys who had been brought 
 from the mess-room. Forty-seven refractory ones 
 were missing. 
 
 "Forward, march! " commanded the captain, and 
 'the recruits advanced, keeping time with the regular 
 step of the soldiers, like a column of prisoners of war. 
 
 The special train was waiting on a side track, and 
 the infantrymen filled their canteens at the drinking 
 fountain after carefully swallowing their contents of 
 ten-sou wine to appease the thirst of the Joy Boys 
 from the North, who had been brought from Cambrai 
 by an escort of first-line troops. They had been con- 
 fined in a third-class carriage, marked C. 1977 21 T., 
 since eight o'clock that morning, and the approach of 
 the Parisians brought them crowding to the windows. 
 The open mouths of these stolid, brown-skinned
 
 THE JOY BOYS 185 
 
 Flemish men, experts with the knife, were the only 
 evidence of their curiosity. 
 
 The soldiers, reinforced by the police, took up posi- 
 tions facing the train, and formed a living barrier 
 against any intrusion of the railwaymen, who were 
 freed from their labours by the striking of twelve 
 o'clock. 
 
 M. de Batonnet concluded his important supervision 
 of Mme. Hart-Olivier's furniture, and greeted a staff 
 captain, whose well-anointed hair at the back of his 
 head repeated the gleaming black of his varnished 
 boots. This smart-looking individual felt the need of 
 exercising his authority, so he turned to the crowd of 
 inquisitive clerks, and ordered them to stand back, 
 accompanying his words by a series of rapid indica- 
 tions with his gloved hand. 
 
 The unadorned officials of the Railway Company 
 made a poor showing beside these gaudy and incom- 
 petent officers, but they answered their requests for 
 information patronizngly, and told them to take their 
 seats, for it was time for the train to start: twelve- 
 eight. 
 
 In the confusion of the last minute, the officers were 
 forced to abandon their rigid attitudes. The locomo- 
 tive moved slowly forward, and a tight bunch of heads 
 filled every window. The men from the North still 
 gazed silently and stupidly, like caged animals, at the 
 people on the platform; but the Parisians screamed
 
 r86 PEOPLE 
 
 out their hatred of their old enemies, the police. 
 Their faces were distorted with rage and despair. 
 Fists and clenched hands shot out furiously, almost 
 tearing arms from shoulders. These men were now 
 under military control, and the policemen remained 
 silent, trying to conceal their anger at the insults 
 hurled at them. 
 
 The noise of the train, now well under way, drowned 
 the spent voices, and the yelling soon ceased, except 
 for one man, who was leaning through a broken win- 
 dow, holding the two jagged edges with his hands. 
 His words were inaudible, but his lips showed that he 
 was repeating over and over again, " To hell with the 
 police! " 
 
 Then he disappeared beneath the attack of a recruit 
 just behind him, who stretched out his arms and 
 shouted: 
 
 " Good-bye, Brothers! " 
 
 Perhaps he saw some friends, or it may be that he 
 was addressing himself to the watching crowd. 
 
 The red disk on the end of the train passed out 
 of the station, and the officers on the platform pulled 
 out their watches and hurried off to lunch. An in- 
 fantry sergeant raised his rifle: "Attention!" and 
 the railwaymen, who had been distracted for a mo- 
 ment by the departure of these forlorn individuals, 
 resumed their ordinary existence.
 
 MONSIEUR BECQUERIAUX 
 
 M. BECQUERIAUX, of the Soudant Weaving Mills 
 (Becqueriaux & Co.), walked into a barber-shop, and 
 was shown to a vacant chair by one of the white- 
 coated barbers. 
 
 " This way, Sir. Do you wish a hair-cut? " 
 
 "Yes. And a shave too, please." 
 
 " Very good, Sir. Would you care for a magazine? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 M. Becqueriaux had to meditate upon more urgent 
 matters than the pictures in a magazine. He cal- 
 culated: 
 
 " Urals are 482 to-day, and they're going up. I 
 sold 300 shares short, at 350. On the thirtieth, when 
 the affair is wound up, they'll be up to 500: a loss 
 of 45,000 francs." 
 
 He passed his arms through the sleeves in the bar- 
 ber's cloth, and replied to his question: 
 
 "Yes, cut it rather short." 
 
 Sitting there with his arms crossed in his lap, he 
 gave one the impression of a white sack, burst open 
 at the top by his black head, beneath the barber's 
 gleaming scissors. A precise voice next to him said: 
 " Wipe it carefully, please." He rolled his eyes as far 
 around as possible, and discovered M. Renard, his 
 
 187,
 
 i88 PEOPLE 
 
 blond hair almost invisible under a thick coating of 
 lather. A barber, with rolled-up sleeves, began to 
 rub vigorously. 
 
 "That's enough," said M. Renard, and he greeted 
 M. Becqueriaux in the mirror. The latter replied by 
 raising his eyebrows, since he was obliged to keep 
 his head still for the barber. 
 
 " He could easily get me out of this scrape," thought 
 M. Becqueriaux* " forty-five thousand francs would 
 mean nothing to him. He gives twice that amount 
 every year to the women around here and in Paris. 
 But I won't ask him for it; he was nearly sold up 
 six years ago, and it increases his opinion of himself 
 to see this happen to others." 
 
 M. Becqueriaux turned his head as much as the 
 scissors would permit, in order to see the occupants 
 of the other chairs. The shop was patronized exclu- 
 sively by big business men. 
 
 M. Evricourt, Counsellor-General, who was as big 
 as two men, held forth to his barber at the top of 
 his lungs. Universal suffrage had taught him to talk 
 to everybody, and he was a democrat. Ever since 
 the war scare, he had kept aside two hundred thousand 
 francs in gold, but this did not prevent him from in- 
 dulging in frequent flutters in Textiles, he was the 
 owner of several spinning mills, and his plunges were 
 usually taken at the right moment. There was a 
 million francs' worth of flax in his establishment in the
 
 MONSIEUR BECQUERIAUX 189 
 
 rue au Peterinck, on which he expected a rise, and he 
 had just scored off his brother, who had been obliged 
 to buy tow from him; this transaction had netted him 
 three hundred thousand. 
 
 M. Bonnel, whose eyes were the colour of the razor 
 blade that moved across his cheek, wore his usual ap- 
 pearance of gloom. People didn't know just what he 
 was worth, but his wife had never been seen without 
 at least ten thousand francs hanging from each ear. 
 His friends declared that he assisted firms that had 
 come to grief, put them on their feet again, and then 
 sold out his share at a profit of one hundred per cent. 
 When the Artificial Silk Company had privately 
 wound up its affairs, the factory, and the property on 
 which it stood, had come to him as mortgagee. Two 
 days ago he had sold these back to the company at 
 a profit of three hundred per cent., for the manufac- 
 ture of the Carlier Patents, of which concern he him- 
 self was the director. Others said he sometimes came 
 out badly in these deals, and that he lived on what 
 he made out of his cotton twisting business. 
 
 " I wonder whether he's worth a lot," thought M. 
 Becqueriaux, " or whether he's just comfortably off? 
 His clothes, and the expression on his face, don't give 
 the slightest hint. When he hears I'm done for, he'll 
 come rummaging into my affairs to see if there's any- 
 thing he can turn to account, even if he is worth 
 twenty million francs."
 
 igo PEOPLE 
 
 He tried to see into the minds of these men, who 
 nodded to him in the street, and asked after his wife 
 and children. The ones he knew best would take his 
 downfall calmly; and the others would be delighted, and 
 would say he had bitten off more than he could chew. 
 
 " Soudant took me as a partner on account of my 
 ability, and not because of my hundred thousand 
 francs. I wanted to increase my capital by a little 
 speculation, and I've lost. Soudant helped me out last 
 year. He said: 'You can stay with us, but don't 
 gamble any more.' He made a fortune at it, and he's 
 afraid I will too. He'd never get over it, if I should 
 make as much as he's got. I know he wants to keep 
 me, and he'll never regret doing it. It's going to take 
 my whole share in the year's profits to get me out 
 of the hole I'll be in. I wonder on what terms 
 Soudant will advance it to me." 
 
 The barber obliged him to sink his chin upon his 
 breast, and M. Becqueriaux, who hated being pushed 
 about like this, shook his head irritably. Then he 
 closed his eyes, and began to weigh his chances with 
 Soudant: 
 
 " It takes an experienced man to manage the rascals 
 who call themselves workmen to-day. Soudant's not 
 up to it, and never will be; he's only a business man. 
 The men are like a lot of convicts, and it's a good 
 thing, because they need a warden. The firm won't 
 let me go."
 
 MONSIEUR BECQUERIAUX 191 
 
 He felt a sudden pressure on his left shoulder; the 
 barber was leaning heavily upon him, as though he 
 were a piece of furniture, and M. Becqueriaux's first 
 impulse was to shake him off, and treat him to the 
 kind of language his workmen heard him use. But 
 a sort of shyness, that he couldn't at all understand, 
 kept him silent and motionless in his chair. Was he 
 afraid of raising his voice in the presence of these 
 men, who would, perhaps, soon be wishing to avoid 
 speaking to him? In the mirror before him, he 
 watched the barber. He was a thin, grey-haired man, 
 whose white jacket and well-cut hair gave him a super- 
 ficial appearance of youth, but his fifty-five years 
 could not be more than momentarily masked. He 
 supported himself on his customer's shoulder, his 
 white face distorted by a sudden pain, and he watched 
 anxiously to see whether the man, whose money was 
 going to buy his bread and butter, had noticed any- 
 thing out of the way. M. Becqueriaux lowered his 
 eyes, and the scissors began snipping, but only to 
 come again to a sudden stop. An acute attack of 
 sciatica, or something like it, had taken the barber 
 just above the hip, and he writhed with the pain of 
 it. Then M. Becqueriaux thought someone was look- 
 ing at him from the mirror, and he was astonished 
 to find that it was himself, Becqueriaux; he had never 
 seen this expression upon his face before. A man's 
 thoughts can alter his face more than a hair-cut, and
 
 192 PEOPLE 
 
 he flashed a welcoming smile at the unfamiliar reflec- 
 tion in the mirror. 
 
 The barber straightened up, supporting himself with 
 his two hands on the wooden back of the chair: 
 
 " Shall I shave you, Sir? " 
 
 "Yes, please," said M. Becqueriaux, and when the 
 lather was on his face, he saw that the pain had not 
 abated. He tried to assist the barber by holding his 
 cheek in a position requiring the shortest possible 
 movements. The razor passed slowly, but carefully, 
 over his face. The tortured man was doing his work 
 well. 
 
 M. Becqueriaux spared him as much as he could: 
 
 "Don't bother with my moustache. It'll do quite 
 well like that, thank you." 
 
 He put on his overcoat, before the barber had a 
 chance to hold it for him, and slipped five francs into 
 his hand. The grey head bowed low. 
 
 M. Becqueriaux nodded to M. Evricourt, whose 
 smiling face was red and smooth. Outside, the cold 
 wind bit into a tiny cut on his left cheek. He touched 
 it, and saw a little pink spot on his forefinger. He 
 wasn't angry at all; a moment ago, he had not recog- 
 nized his own face in the glass; now even his impulses 
 were strange to him. What sort of a face would he 
 find looking at him now? . . . This was how he 
 learned what pity was.
 
 THE KING'S C'S 
 
 MY friend Pelaud, bachelor of letters and butcher, 
 was polishing his right thumb nail on a steel which 
 he held in his left hand. 
 
 "What are you doing that for: to cut your quid? 
 You look a bit down in the mouth. Customers no 
 good? Eh?" 
 
 He started to whistle: 
 
 " Tons les clients sont des cochons." 
 
 Then he pointed to a young man dressed in his Sun- 
 day clothes, who stood in front of the Church of Saint- 
 Philippe-du-Roule, crying: " L' Action Franqaise." 
 
 " There's something you can get real amusement out 
 of. It's the only comic paper you can get now for 
 a sou. Le Rire and Le Sourire cost four, and you 
 can read them for nothing when you get a hair-cut. 
 L' Action Franqaise is never at the barber's. Have a 
 look at it." 
 
 He beckoned to the distinguished vendor of the 
 paper, gave him a sou, and told me: 
 
 "He's a capital C, which means King's Camelot. 
 Too much trouble to say all that." 
 
 193
 
 194 PEOPLE 
 
 Pelaud, who just missed being a priest, explained 
 his present plight: 
 
 " I'm a butcher because I'm stony broke." 
 
 His continual habit of pulling out his empty pockets 
 had earned him the usual nickname: Pelaud.* He 
 had all the current notions about the butcher's trade, 
 and was always surprised when people refused to eat 
 meat that had not been killed. 
 
 "And do you eat nothing but killed meat? Dead 
 mutton is dead mutton, from the time it stops moving 
 until it starts to move again." 
 
 He made a great fuss over the King's Camelots to 
 please his old boss in the rue de Bellechasse, who had 
 to keep on the right side of the high-grade customers 
 in his quarter. Now Pelaud had a different opinion 
 of these gentlemen: 
 
 "Antique Foutaise! They're humbugs and out of 
 date. Nothing but ghosts, and always hi evidence. I 
 couldn't be one of them, any more than I could be a 
 priest. It takes courage not to mind being taken for 
 a fool when you bark at the moon." 
 
 Pelaud was delighted with my attention, and seemed 
 pleased to have someone to whom he could speak in 
 a language above that of his profession; he began to 
 draw upon his knowledge of pure French: 
 
 " These little fellows make a great mistake in taking 
 time from their studies to amuse the public with their 
 
 * Pelaud, slang for "sou."
 
 THE KING'S C'S 195 
 
 attempts to look important. One ought to do impor- 
 tant things with the air of doing nothing, and an ap- 
 pearance of great preoccupation should only be worn 
 when one has nothing to accomplish. They worship 
 their lord and master Philippe, who was careful 
 enough to take a number: eight, as one generally 
 does when one has to wait. 
 
 "They're tender-skinned fighters, and for that 
 reason they're usually clever enough to arrange their 
 brawls when they themselves are in force against one 
 opponent. The only thing is, they have no rallying 
 cry; I told them to use, ' Pee-weet! ' for ' Montjoye 
 Saint-Denys! ' 
 
 " M. Charles Maurras, from whose mouth fall 
 jewels, teaches them political paleontology, and M. 
 Pujo has charge of their immortal souls: 'You don't 
 agree with me! ALL RIGHT! Where's the whip! ' 
 
 " They're like siphons of soda water. Always 
 bursting out with something, in the belief that the 
 gentleman with ticket No. 8 can be put on the throne 
 of France by punching people in the face and making 
 crazy speeches." 
 
 Pelaud held up his hand: 
 
 " Stop laughing! You'll wear yourself out and 
 make the jokes stale before his turn comes, and when 
 he's dead ..." He pointed to Article 445 of the 
 Criminal Code in the newspaper. 
 
 " It's always the same old story till you're sick of
 
 196 PEOPLE 
 
 it. They cut out wooden amulets and give them to 
 the youngsters who do the best fighting. When they 
 hang them around their necks like scapularies, they 
 acquire fresh strength. I got the talisman for teach- 
 ing them to pour lead into mutton bones, but they 
 were much too well brought up to know how to use 
 them. They're still at the scratching stage, a long 
 way from killing anybody yet. They're not assassins, 
 but only puppets, quite incapable of murdering any- 
 one, or of putting M. Eight on the balcony with an 
 arquebuse. But they do go in for enough violence to 
 suit their contemptible little dispositions, and, as they 
 think, to astonish the pubic. Hear them now! Hou- 
 hou! they're kicking up a rumpus! 
 
 " In every nook and corner, you'll find them jab- 
 bering their rotten nonsense. They even call the serv- 
 ants together in the Salle Wagram. I get disgusted 
 with flunkies. They never wipe their feet, even for the 
 servants' staircase, where it's so dark that you have 
 to look with your fingers. I always say: 
 
 " ' If I was like you, paid to go paddling around 
 over carpets with slippers on, or to warm my tail in a 
 comfortable chair, I wouldn't have muddy shoes.' ' 
 
 He stopped using the ignorant, malicious speech of 
 his calling, and went on more correctly: 
 
 " Plenty of servants are C's. M. le comte Eugene 
 de Lur-Saluces told them that M. Eight was King of 
 Labour. Where was he apprenticed? The Comte
 
 THE KING'S C'S 197 
 
 didn't say. You find people working everywhere. 
 When Bebe-la-Chinoise started out to do her stunt at 
 Ternes, she used to say: c I'm off to my work.' " 
 
 I offered this explanation: 
 
 " King of Labour, who controls the phenomena of 
 production, consumption, and trade." 
 
 " Wait," said Pelaud, " I have to go in here a 
 moment. . . . Every labouring man has a dream 
 not that of being ruled by M. Eight and His 
 Royal Highness would see it realized if he were to 
 stroll by one fine day, as the C's here are always hop- 
 ing he will do, and, out of respect for our ideals, we 
 should spoil the seat of this Labour King's trousers 
 with the nails of our labourer's shoes. 
 
 " ' Please wipe your feet.' 
 
 " We know a little History. 
 
 "And when M. Eight is crowned, who will be 
 Keeper of the Sponge? M. Charles Maurras? And 
 will there be a brothel near the Palace, or, as they 
 say, in the Palace? Will his accession to the throne 
 be celebrated by illuminations in the bawdy houses? 
 
 " The people, who think nothing of the vapourings 
 of these A.F.'s, only laugh at the idea of being ruled 
 by this old scoundrel. The working-people, who want 
 their ideas worked out practically, deserve to be led 
 by a man. 
 
 " What does this King do? He runs after women. 
 Pretty theories that are waiting to be put into prac-
 
 198 PEOPLE 
 
 tice won't do. If M. Eight's forebears had not long 
 since disgusted us with royalty, he would only have 
 to show himself, and it would turn France's stomach. 
 
 " The people who are asking for a King must either 
 have oil to sell, or be afflicted with king's evil. The 
 old ones were nothing but charlatans on whose heads 
 the priests made salad at Saint-Denis. 
 
 " And that little chap who's always singing: ' Adieu, 
 veau, vache, cochon . . . couvee' I learned that 
 at school too. 
 
 " There are King's Camelots still on the bottle, and 
 some have one foot in the grave: the young ones as 
 mad as hatters, and the old ones only able to slobber; 
 for it is written: 
 
 1 My little Leon, 
 Every year you live makes you a better C! 
 
 " I'm off. I've got to trim those sirloins." And I 
 heard his voice, now that of a journeyman-butcher: 
 
 "Beef at ten sous! 
 Beef at eight sous! 
 And it's all good stuff! "
 
 THE SCREEN 
 
 M. PLUVINAGE kept a hotel in the Place d'Armes. 
 The unmarried captains and lieutenants in the line 
 regiment, who were stationed in the little town with 
 its three bell towers, could get their meals there for 
 a hundred francs a month. There were two tables in 
 the long dining-room: one with twenty places, between 
 the fireplace and the window that looked on to the 
 square, and another that would seat forty, by the 
 window giving on to the courtyard. The room was a 
 lofty one, with a beamed ceiling and a tiny fireplace; 
 in winter it was bitterly cold, but the food was good. 
 The officers, and a few consequential civilians, sat at 
 the cheerful table, and the people of small importance 
 sat with the transients at the gloomy one. At least 
 fifteen seats were occupied every day at the officers' 
 table, while the other was never more than a third 
 full, except on market days, when it was encompassed 
 by a dense belt of humanity. 
 
 The Flemish lunch-hour was one o'clock, and the 
 officers, who were accustomed to eating at noon, split 
 the difference, and by keeping punctually to this hour 
 every day, they had only to fulfil the tiresome duty 
 of greeting the other occupants of the room on get- 
 ting up from their meal. 
 
 199
 
 200 PEOPLE 
 
 At table they talked shop and food. A little bald- 
 headed lieutenant from Avignon was fond of saying: 
 
 " In the South, we ate stuffed pumpkin blossoms, 
 and asparagus with mimosa sauce." Or else, " In the 
 Alps, I've often eaten chamois meat; it's delicious! " 
 
 The civilians who sat at the officers' table some- 
 times entered the dining-room with them, but they in- 
 dulged in conversation of a higher grade. It always 
 amused them intensely to speculate as to why M. 
 Tariet, a widower with a chicory business, and a 
 pension, never had any appetite on Mondays. They 
 supposed it was from too much liquor on Sundays, and 
 too much of what usually follows the consumption of 
 liquor. 
 
 M. Tariet always came last into the dining-room, 
 and when the little old man smilingly took his seat, 
 M. Boudringhien, Recorder to the Justice of the 
 Peace, and a man with a reputation for good living, 
 made noises like a cat calling amorously to its mate: 
 "Miaou! Miaou! " And the captains, whose well- 
 filled stomachs touched the edge of the table, burst 
 into shouts of laughter. They appeared in civilian 
 clothes at dinner, and this attire suited their free and 
 easy manners better than the uniform. 
 
 M. Verhard looked more like a soldier than any 
 of the other civilians; he was Chief Receiver of Tolls, 
 Sub-Lieutenant in the Reserves, and Captain of the 
 Fire Brigade, and he gave one the impression of an
 
 THE SCREEN 201 
 
 enormous wine-cask. This massive figure, always 
 stiffly erect, was surmounted by a very small red face, 
 or perhaps it only seemed small on account of a per- 
 petual frown which shortened the distance between the 
 eyebrows and the mouth. M. Verhard's whole face 
 seemed to be drawn up into a knot at his nose; his 
 calling required severity. He was more carefully 
 dressed than the officers, who wore their caps on one 
 side; the brim of his hat was exactly equidistant from 
 his two big ears. He never laughed when M. Bou- 
 dringhien said " Miaou! ", but he had a weakness for 
 scandal, and his companions nicknamed him M. 
 Fact-is-that, because of his invariable opening phrase. 
 
 " The fact is," he said one day at lunch, " that the 
 colonel of our cuirassiers is a licentious old thing. He 
 hung around so much in the waiting-room with those 
 two pretty ticket girls, that the Company had to get 
 rid of them, and since this morning two of the ugliest 
 ones in their employ have been sitting behind the 
 wickets: one's got a beard, and the other's cross- 
 eyed." 
 
 The sudden entrance of a captain of the cuirassiers 
 terrified the boarders. M. Verhard sat up so stiffly 
 that he could eat nothing but bread; he was unwilling 
 to risk carrying anything else all the way from his 
 plate to his mouth, for fear of spilling. Then the 
 cuirassier saluted the officers of the line, who stood 
 up with red faces and full mouths.
 
 202 PEOPLE 
 
 He asked politely whether the place nearest him 
 was taken, and then sat down with the infantry, a 
 cuirassier had never before been known to do such a 
 thing. The civilians at both tables stared incredu- 
 lously, when he wasn't looking their way, and Mme. 
 Pluvinage read him the bill-of-fare. She waited upon 
 him carefully, and he must have enjoyed his meal, for 
 he brought another captain from his squadron with 
 him the next day. There weren't enough cavalry 
 officers at the Mouton Noir to make it worth the pro- 
 prietor's while to feed them well, so they ate badly, 
 and soon began to suffer from indigestion. 
 
 Silver-striped horsemen and gilt-striped foot-soldiers 
 ate together, just as amicably as before the invasion 
 from the Mouton Noir; they passed each other bread 
 and salt, as though it were the most natural thing in 
 the world, but the conversation, which flowed in the 
 usual channels, food and women, was monopolized 
 by the cuirassiers. 
 
 It was only the civilians who discussed the relative 
 merits of Cavalry and Infantry, and they did this after 
 the officers had left the dining-room. M. Verhard was 
 the cuirassiers' most violent partisan, and he always 
 disposed of the younger Pluvinage, once an artillery- 
 man, and now a waiter in his father's hotel, by 
 declaring: 
 
 " It takes six-foot soldiers to surround one of our 
 spur-boys."
 
 THE SCREEN 203 
 
 Then the line regiment left town for a few days' 
 drill, and the cavalry officers were more at their ease. 
 They brought another bachelor to try the food: Cap- 
 tain Count de Pisselet. His eyebrows were very 
 prominent, and they pushed the skin of his forehead 
 up towards his shiny blond hair, causing three deep 
 wrinkles; his mouth was crooked, and it hung open 
 slightly. The astonished civilians, upon whom his 
 scornful eyes never rested even for a moment, spoke 
 to each other in low voices. Amazement seemed to 
 have untied the knot at M. Verhard's nose, and his 
 face spread to a normal size. The table was now oc- 
 cupied by two distinct sets: a huddled group of 
 civilians at the end nearest the courtyard, and the 
 cuirassiers by the window looking on to the square. 
 
 Captain Count de Pisselet had not wished to par- 
 take of M. Pluvinage's food while the infantry were 
 in evidence, and now he wanted to do so permanently, 
 but without compromising the honour of the regiment. 
 He beckoned to M. Pluvinage, who came and leaned 
 with both hands on the back of a chair upon which he 
 first placed his serving napkin. The old man was bent 
 over with rheumatism, and he looked as though he 
 ought to be passing the collection plate in church, 
 with his smooth-shaven face and black cloth skull-cap. 
 
 He made the customary remarks to the officers in 
 the doleful voice men use when they wish to conceal 
 the fact that they are getting rich:
 
 204 PEOPLE 
 
 " We try hard to please you, gentlemen. Do you 
 find everything to your liking? Butter's thirty-eight 
 sous a pound, but you always have plenty of it. It's 
 no joke nowadays to run a hotel. Not like selling 
 drinks over a bar, where you've only got to pour 
 out ... " 
 
 "Yes, yes. Quite true," interrupted Count de 
 Pisselet, shortening his face by closing his mouth. 
 " But we want you to arrange a separate service for 
 us in a room to ourselves. There will be five alto- 
 gether. Will you please see to this? " 
 
 " It shall be done," said M. Pluvinage; " you can 
 have a room on the floor above. Same price: a hun- 
 dred francs a month, wine included. And good wine 
 it is, too! I choose it myself, and there's no cellar 
 in this town can touch mine. Everybody knows I 
 can tell the good from the bad." 
 
 In the kitchen Mme. Pluvinage warned him: 
 
 " You'll lose customers if you do it. I call it an 
 insult to the infantry! They never make any fuss, 
 and they like everything we give them. It's another 
 story with Count de Pisselet; nothing satisfies him." 
 
 When the infantry came back to town, M. Pluvinage 
 said to them: 
 
 " Put yourselves in my place; I've got to earn my 
 living, and there's all kinds of customers to please 
 when you're in the hotel business." 
 
 They didn't take offence, and on St. Justine's Day
 
 THE SCREEN 205 
 
 they sent their usual bouquet to Mme. Pluvinage, who 
 opened champagne for them and kissed them all 
 round. She didn't go upstairs to the cuirassiers, for 
 they were waited upon by the scullion, who wore the 
 frock coat in which M. Pluvinage was married. 
 
 The cook was furious at the cuirassiers for depriv- 
 ing him of the scullion when he most needed him, and 
 he frequently sent them up trimmings and the tough 
 outside cuts, in spite of the eagle eye of his employer. 
 M. Pluvinage was anxious not to lose five boarders at 
 a hundred francs each, and it was a feather in his cap 
 to have enticed them away from the Mouton Noir. 
 However, one of them could no longer endure the sight 
 of the scullion's hands, and went back. Two others 
 got married, and in November only Count de Pisselet 
 and the second arrival remained. 
 
 They had to have an extra supply of fuel, and lights 
 in the evening, for they generally stayed after dinner 
 to smoke by the fire. It wasn't worth while to upset 
 the kitchen for two customers, and M. Pluvinage 
 courageously climbed the stairs to tell them so, and 
 to ask them to come down into the dining-room. 
 
 " Think what you are saying," was Count de 
 Pisselet's only reply, but his companion was more 
 practical: 
 
 " Put us in the dining-room, but apart from the 
 others; a little table with a screen around it." And 
 Count de Pisselet agreed with him.
 
 206 PEOPLE 
 
 M. Phi village reached a decision at once, without 
 even consulting his wife; he well knew what her 
 answer would be. 
 
 " No, gentlemen, it's impossible! I can't insult my 
 old customers like that. I've got a reputation to keep 
 up, too. And, anyhow, there isn't a screen in the 
 house." 
 
 " All right, all right," said Count de Pisselet, " we 
 won't insist." 
 
 They got what they deserved, and now they're back 
 at the Mouton Noir, getting thinner every day.
 
 THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY
 
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 THE WORLD'S ILLUSION. By J. WASSERMANN. Translated by 
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 The first authorized version of the critical work of one of the great 
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 A new interpretation of the meaning of education, by one who 
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