now high-lighted landscape; thinking that the inexperienced green
buds will be wishing, before long, they had not been tempted to
come out so soon; and wondering who lives in this or that chateau,
all window and lattice, and what the family may have for breakfast
this sharp morning.
After the Market comes the Abattoir. What abattoir shall I visit
first? Montmartre is the largest. So I will go there.
The abattoirs are all within the walls of Paris, with an eye to the
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receipt of the octroi duty; but, they stand in open places in the
suburbs, removed from the press and bustle of the city. They are
managed by the Syndicat or Guild of Butchers, under the inspection
of the Police. Certain smaller items of the revenue derived from
them are in part retained by the Guild for the payment of their
expenses, and in part devoted by it to charitable purposes in
connexion with the trade. They cost six hundred and eighty
thousand pounds; and they return to the city of Paris an interest
on that outlay, amounting to nearly six and a-half per cent.
Here, in a sufficiently dismantled space is the Abattoir of
Montmartre, covering nearly nine acres of ground, surrounded by a
high wall, and looking from the outside like a cavalry barrack. At
the iron gates is a small functionary in a large cocked hat.
'Monsieur desires to see the abattoir? Most certainly.' State
being inconvenient in private transactions, and Monsieur being
already aware of the cocked hat, the functionary puts it into a
little official bureau which it almost fills, and accompanies me in
the modest attire - as to his head - of ordinary life.
Many of the animals from Poissy have come here. On the arrival of
each drove, it was turned into yonder ample space, where each
butcher who had bought, selected his own purchases. Some, we see
now, in these long perspectives of stalls with a high over-hanging
roof of wood and open tiles rising above the walls. While they
rest here, before being slaughtered, they are required to be fed
and watered, and the stalls must be kept clean. A stated amount of
fodder must always be ready in the loft above; and the supervision
is of the strictest kind. The same regulations apply to sheep and
calves; for which, portions of these perspectives are strongly
railed off. All the buildings are of the strongest and most solid
description.
After traversing these lairs, through which, besides the upper
provision for ventilation just mentioned, there may be a thorough
current of air from opposite windows in the side walls, and from
doors at either end, we traverse the broad, paved, court-yard until
we come to the slaughter-houses. They are all exactly alike, and
adjoin each other, to the number of eight or nine together, in
blocks of solid building. Let us walk into the first.
It is firmly built and paved with stone. It is well lighted,
thoroughly aired, and lavishly provided with fresh water. It has
two doors opposite each other; the first, the door by which I
entered from the main yard; the second, which is opposite, opening
on another smaller yard, where the sheep and calves are killed on
benches. The pavement of that yard, I see, slopes downward to a
gutter, for its being more easily cleansed. The slaughter-house is
fifteen feet high, sixteen feet and a-half wide, and thirty-three
feet long. It is fitted with a powerful windlass, by which one man
at the handle can bring the head of an ox down to the ground to
receive the blow from the pole-axe that is to fell him - with the
means of raising the carcass and keeping it suspended during the
after-operation of dressing - and with hooks on which carcasses can
hang, when completely prepared, without touching the walls. Upon
the pavement of this first stone chamber, lies an ox scarcely dead.
If I except the blood draining from him, into a little stone well
in a corner of the pavement, the place is free from offence as the
Place de la Concorde. It is infinitely purer and cleaner, I know,
my friend the functionary, than the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Ha,
ha! Monsieur is pleasant, but, truly, there is reason, too, in
what he says.
I look into another of these slaughter-houses. 'Pray enter,' says
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a gentleman in bloody boots. 'This is a calf I have killed this
morning. Having a little time upon my hands, I have cut and
punctured this lace pattern in the coats of his stomach. It is
pretty enough. I did it to divert myself.' - 'It is beautiful,
Monsieur, the slaughterer!' He tells me I have the gentility to
say so.
I look into rows of slaughter-houses. In many, retail dealers, who
have come here for the purpose, are making bargains for meat.
There is killing enough, certainly, to satiate an unused eye; and
there are steaming carcasses enough, to suggest the expediency of a
fowl and salad for dinner; but, everywhere, there is an orderly,
clean, well-systematised routine of work in progress - horrible
work at the best, if you please; but, so much the greater reason
why it should be made the best of. I don't know (I think I have
observed, my name is Bull) that a Parisian of the lowest order is
particularly delicate, or that his nature is remarkable for an
infinitesimal infusion of ferocity; but, I do know, my potent,
grave, and common counselling Signors, that he is forced, when at
this work, to submit himself to a thoroughly good system, and to
make an Englishman very heartily ashamed of you.
Here, within the walls of the same abattoir, in other roomy and
commodious buildings, are a place for converting the fat into
tallow and packing it for market - a place for cleansing and
scalding calves' heads and sheep's feet - a place for preparing
tripe - stables and coach-houses for the butchers - innumerable
conveniences, aiding in the diminution of offensiveness to its
lowest possible point, and the raising of cleanliness and
supervision to their highest. Hence, all the meat that goes out of
the gate is sent away in clean covered carts. And if every trade
connected with the slaughtering of animals were obliged by law to
be carried on in the same place, I doubt, my friend, now reinstated
in the cocked hat (whose civility these two francs imperfectly
acknowledge, but appear munificently to repay), whether there could
be better regulations than those which are carried out at the
Abattoir of Montmartre. Adieu, my friend, for I am away to the
other side of Paris, to the Abattoir of Grenelle! And there I find
exactly the same thing on a smaller scale, with the addition of a
magnificent Artesian well, and a different sort of conductor, in
the person of a neat little woman with neat little eyes, and a neat
little voice, who picks her neat little way among the bullocks in a
very neat little pair of shoes and stockings.
Such is the Monument of French Foll
y which a foreigneering people
have erected, in a national hatred and antipathy for common
counselling wisdom. That wisdom, assembled in the City of London,
having distinctly refused, after a debate of three days long, and
by a majority of nearly seven to one, to associate itself with any
Metropolitan Cattle Market unless it be held in the midst of the
City, it follows that we shall lose the inestimable advantages of
common counselling protection, and be thrown, for a market, on our
own wretched resources. In all human probability we shall thus
come, at last, to erect a monument of folly very like this French
monument. If that be done, the consequences are obvious. The
leather trade will be ruined, by the introduction of American
timber, to be manufactured into shoes for the fallen English; the
Lord Mayor will be required, by the popular voice, to live entirely
on frogs; and both these changes will (how, is not at present quite
clear, but certainly somehow or other) fall on that unhappy landed
interest which is always being killed, yet is always found to be
alive - and kicking.
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Footnotes:
(1) Give a bill
(2) Three months' imprisonment as reputed thieves.
[*End*]
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