In the Days of My Youth: A Novel

by Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  THE QUARTIER LATIN.

  The dear old Quartier Latin of my time--the Quartier Latin of Balzac, ofBeranger, of Henry Murger---the Quartier Latin where Franz Mueller hadhis studio; where Messieurs Gustave; Jules, and Adrien gave theirunparalleled _soirees dansantes_; where I first met my ex-flameJosephine--exists no longer. It has been improved off the face of theearth, and with it such a gay bizarre, improvident world of youth andfolly as shall never again be met together on the banks of the Seine.

  Ah me! how well I remember that dingy, delightful Arcadia--the Rue de laVieille Boucherie, narrow, noisy, crowded, with projecting upper storiesand Gothic pent-house roofs--the Rue de la Parcheminerie, unchangedsince the Middle Ages--the Rue St. Jacques, steep, interminable,dilapidated; with its dingy cabarets, its brasseries, its cheaprestaurants, its grimy shop windows filled with colored prints, withcooked meats, with tobacco, old books, and old clothes; its ancientcolleges and hospitals, time-worn and weather-beaten, frowning down uponthe busy thoroughfare and breaking the squalid line of shops; its grimold hotels swarming with lodgers, floor above floor, from the cobblersin the cellars to the grisettes in the attics! Then again, the gloomyold Place St. Michel, its abundant fountain ever flowing, eversurrounded by water-carts and water-carriers, by women with pails, andbare-footed street urchins, and thirsty drovers drinking out of ironcups chained to the wall. And then, too, the Rue de la Harpe....

  I close my eyes, and the strange, precipitous, picturesque, decrepit oldstreet, with its busy, surging crowd, its street-cries, itsstreet-music, and its indescribable union of gloom and gayety, risesfrom its ashes. Here, grand old dilapidated mansions with shatteredstone-carvings, delicate wrought-iron balconies all rust-eaten andbroken, and windows in which every other pane is cracked or patched,alternate with more modern but still more ruinous houses, some leaningthis way, some that, some with bulging upper stories, some with doorwayssunk below the level of the pavement. Yonder, gloomy and grim, standsthe College of Saint Louis. Dark alleys open off here and there from themain thoroughfare, and narrow side streets, steep as flights of steps.Low sheds and open stalls cling, limpet-like, to every available nookand corner. An endless procession of trucks, wagons, water-carts, andfiacres rumbles perpetually by. Here people live at their windows and inthe doorways--the women talking from balcony to balcony, the mensmoking, reading, playing at dominoes. Here too are more cafes andcabarets, open-air stalls for the sale of fried fish, and cheaprestaurants for workmen and students, where, for a sum equivalent tosevenpence half-penny English, the Quartier Latin regales itself uponmeats and drinks of dark and enigmatical origin. Close at hand is thePlace and College of the Sorbonne--silent in the midst of noisy life,solitary in the heart of the most crowded quarter of Paris. A sombremediaeval gloom pervades that ancient quadrangle; scant tufts of sicklygrass grow here and there in the interstices of the pavement; the dustof centuries crust those long rows of windows never opened. A littlefurther on is the Rue des Gres, narrow, crowded, picturesque, oneuninterrupted perspective of bookstalls and bookshops from end to end.Here the bookseller occasionally pursues a two-fold calling, and retailsnot only literature but a cellar of_ petit vin bleu_; and here,overnight, the thirsty student exchanges for a bottle of Macon the "CodeCivile" that he must perforce buy back again at second-hand inthe morning.

  A little farther on, and we come to the College Saint Louis, once theold College Narbonne; and yet a few yards more, and we are at the doorsof the Theatre du Pantheon, once upon a time the Church of St. Benoit,where the stage occupies the site of the altar, and an orchestra stallin what was once the nave, may be had for seventy-five centimes. Here,too, might be seen the shop of the immortal Lesage, renowned throughoutthe Quartier for the manufacture of a certain kind of transcendentalham-patty, peculiarly beloved by student and grisette; and here,clustering within a stone's throw of each other, were to be found thosefamous restaurants, Pompon, Viot, Flicoteaux, and the "Boeuf Enrage,"where, on gala days, many an Alphonse and Fifine, many a Theophile andCerisette, were wont to hold high feast and festival--terms sevenpencehalf-penny each, bread at discretion, water gratis, wine andtoothpicks extra.

  But it was in the side streets, courts, and _impasses_ that branched offto the left and right of the main arteries, that one came upon the veryheart of the old Pays Latin; for the Rue St. Jacques, the Rue de laHarpe, the Rue des Gres, narrow, steep, dilapidated though they mightbe, were in truth the leading thoroughfares--the Boulevards, so tospeak--of the Student Quartier. In most of the side alleys, however,some of which dated back as far, and farther, than the fifteenthcentury, there was no footway for passengers, and barely space for onewheeled vehicle at a time. A filthy gutter invariably flowed down themiddle of the street. The pavement, as it peeped out here and therethrough a _moraine_ of superimposed mud and offal, was seen to consistof small oblong stones, like petrified kidney potatoes. The houses, someleaning this way, some that, with projecting upper stories andoverhanging gable-roofs, nodded together overhead, leaving but a narrowstrip of sky down which the sunlight strove in vain to struggle. Longpoles upon which were suspended old clothes hung out to air, and raggedlinen to dry, stood out like tattered banners from the attic windows.Here, too, every ground-floor was a shop, open, unglazed, cavernous,where the dealer lay _perdu_ in the gloom of midday, like a spider inthe midst of his web, surrounded by piles of old bottles, old iron, oldclothes, old furniture, or whatever else his stock in trade mightconsist of.

  Of such streets--less like streets, indeed, than narrow, overhanginggorges and ravines of damp and mouldering stone--of such streets, I say,intricate, winding, ill-lighted, unventilated, pervaded by an atmospherecompounded of the fumes of fried fish, tobacco, old leather, mildew anddirt, there were hundreds in the Quartier Latin of my time:--streets tothe last degree unattractive as places of human habitation, but rich,nevertheless, in historic associations, in picturesque detail, and inarchaeological interest. Such a street, for instance, was the Rue duFouarre (scarcely a feature of which has been modernized to this day),where Dante, when a student of theology in Paris, attended the lecturesof one Sigebert, a learned monk of Gemblours, who discoursed to hisscholars in the open air, they sitting round him the while upon freshstraw strewn upon the pavement. Such a street was the Rue des Cordiers,close adjoining the Rue des Gres, where Rousseau lived and wrote; andthe Rue du Dragon, where might then be seen the house of BernardPalissy; and the Rue des Macons, where Racine lived; and the Rue desMarais, where Adrienne Lecouvreur--poor, beautiful, generous, ill-fatedAdrienne Lecouvreur!--died. Here, too, in a blind alley opening off theRue St. Jacques, yet stands part of that Carmelite Convent in which, forthirty years, Madame de la Valliere expiated the solitary frailty of herlife. And so at every turn! Not a gloomy by-street, not a dilapidatedfountain, not a grim old college facade but had its history, or itslegend. Here the voice of Abelard thundered new truths, and Rabelaisjested, and Petrarch discoursed with the doctors. Here, in the Rue del'Ancienne Comedie, walked the shades of Racine, of Moliere, ofCorneille, of Voltaire. Dear, venerable, immortal old Quartier Latin!Thy streets were narrow, but they were the arteries through which,century after century, circulated all the wisdom and poetry, all theart, and science, and learning of France! Their gloom, their squalor,their very dirt was sacred. Could I have had my will, not a stone of theold place should have been touched, not a pavement widened, not alandmark effaced.

  Then beside, yet not apart from, all that was mediaeval and historic inthe Pays Latin, ran the gay, effervescent, laughing current of the lifeof the _jeunessed' aujour d'hui._ Here beat the very heart of that rare,that immortal, that unparalleled _vie de Boheme_, the vagabond poetry ofwhich possesses such an inexhaustible charm for even the soberestimagination. What brick and mortar idylls, what romances _au cinquieme_,what joyous epithalamiums, what gay improvident _menages_, what kisses,what laughter, what tears, what lightly-spoken and lightly-broken vowsthose old walls could have told of!

  Here, apparelled in all sorts o
f unimaginable tailoring, in jauntycolored cap or flapped sombrero, his pipe dangling from his button-hole,his hair and beard displaying every eccentricity under heaven, the Parisstudent, the _Pays Latiniste pur sang_, lived and had his being. Poringover the bookstalls in the Place du Pantheon or the Rue desGres--hurrying along towards this or that college with a huge volumeunder each arm, about nine o'clock in the morning--haunting the cafes atmidday and the restaurants at six--swinging his legs out ofupper windows and smoking in his shirt-sleeves in the summerevenings--crowding the pit of the Odeon and every part of the Theatre duPantheon--playing wind instruments at dead of night to the torment ofhis neighbors, or, in vocal mood, traversing the Quartier with a societyof musical friends about the small hours of the morning--getting intoscuffles with the gendarmes--flirting, dancing, playing billiards andthe deuce; falling in love and in debt; dividing his time betweenAristotle and Mademoiselle Mimi Pinson ... here, and here only, in allhis phases, at every hour of the day and night, he swarmed, ubiquitous.

  And here, too (a necessary sequence), flourished the fair and frailgrisette. Her race, alas! is now all but extinct--the race of Fretillon,of Francine, of Lisette, Musette, Rosette, and all the rest of that toofascinating terminology--the race immortalized again and again byBeranger, Gavarni, Balzac, De Musset; sketched by a hundred pencils anddescribed by a hundred pens; celebrated in all manner of metres and setto all manner of melodies; now caricatured and now canonized; nowpainted wholly _en noir_ and now all _couleur de rose_; yet, howeveroften described, however skilfully analyzed, remaining for everindescribable, and for ever defying analysis!

  "De tous les produits Parisiens," says Monsieur Jules Janin (himself thequintessence of everything most Parisian), "le produit le plus Parisien,sans contredit, c'est la grisette." True; but our epigrammatist shouldhave gone a step farther. He should have added that the grisette _pursang_ is to be found nowhere except in Paris; and (still a step farther)nowhere in Paris save between the Pont Neuf and the Barriere d'Enfer.There she reigns; there (ah! let me use the delicious present tense--letme believe that I still live in Arcadia!)--there she lights up the oldstreets with her smile; makes the old walls ring with her laughter;flits over the crossings like a fairy; wears the most coquettish oflittle caps and the daintiest of little shoes; rises to her work withthe dawn; keeps a pet canary; trains a nasturtium round her window;loves as heartily as she laughs, and almost as readily; owes not a sou,saves not a centime; sews on Adolphe's buttons, like a good neighbor; isnever so happy as when Adolphe in return takes her to Tivoli or theJardin Turc; adores _galette, sucre d'orge_, and Frederick Lemaitre; andlooks upon a masked ball and a debardeur dress as the summit ofhuman felicity.

  _Vive la grisette_! Shall I not follow many an illustrious example andsing my modest paean in her praise? Frown not, august Britannia! Looknot so severely askance upon my poor little heroine of the QuartierLatin! Thinkest thou because thou art so eminently virtuous that she whohas many a serviceable virtue of her own, shall be debarred from hershare in this world's cakes and ale?

  _Vive la grisette_! Let us think and speak no evil of her. "Elle netient au vice que par un rayon, et s'en eloigne par les mille autrespoints de la circonference sociale." The world sees only her follies,and sees them at first sight; her good qualities lie hidden in theshade. Is she not busy as a bee, joyous as a lark, helpful, pitiful,unselfish, industrious, contented? How often has she not slipped herlast coin into the alms-box at the hospital gate, and gone supperless tobed? How often sat up all night, after a long day's toil in a crowdedwork-room, to nurse Victorine in the fever? How often pawned her Sundaygown and shawl, to redeem that coat without which Adolphe cannot appearbefore the examiners to-morrow morning? Granted, if you will, that shehas an insatiable appetite for sweets, cigarettes, and theatricaladmissions--shall she not be welcome to her tastes? And is it her faultif her capacity in the way of miscellaneous refreshments partakes of thenature of the miraculous--somewhat to the inconvenience of Adolphe, whohas overspent his allowance? Supposing even that she may now and thenindulge (among friends) in a very modified can-can at theChaumiere--what does that prove, except that her heels are as light asher heart, and that her early education has been somewhat neglected?

  But I am writing of a world that has vanished as completely as the lostPleiad. The Quartier Latin of my time is no more. The Chaumiere is nomore. The grisette is fast dying out. Of the Rue de la Harpe not arecognisable feature is left. The old Place St. Michel, the fountain,the Theatre du Pantheon, are gone as if they had never been. Wholestreets, I might say whole parishes, have been swept away--wholechapters of mediaeval history erased for ever.

  Well, I love to close my eyes from time to time, and evoke the dear oldhaunts from their ruins; to descend once more the perilous steeps of theRue St. Jacques, and to thread the labyrinthine by-streets that surroundthe Ecole de Medecine. I see them all so plainly! I look in at thefamiliar print-shops--I meet many a long-forgotten face--I hear many along-forgotten voice--I am twenty years of age and a student again!

  Ah me! what a pleasant time, and what a land of enchantment! Dingy,dilapidated, decrepit as it was, that graceless old Quartier Latin,believe me, was paved with roses and lighted with laughing gas.