Paris and the Social Revolution Part 44

[49] Ravachol's masterful sneer at the church on his way to the guillotine was not, it seems, pure perverseness. Ravachol had taken a real liking to the prison priest, whom he admitted to be a good fellow, but he had such a horror of being claimed by the church after his death as an eleventh-hour penitent that he had requested the priest not to a.s.sist at his execution. To this request the priest had answered,-could anything well be more _maladroit_?-"I cannot avoid it. I shall be there by the same right as the headsman."

[50] The _Guesdistes_ and the _Jeunesse Blanquiste_ were the most important exceptions.

[51] Hostile, that is, except at the eleventh hour of their congress, when they usually contrive to vote resolutions of harmony.

[52] Leader of the _Parti Socialiste Revolutionnaire_.

[53] Leader of the _Federation des Travailleurs Socialistes_.

[54] There is no socialist daily, however, which is not under capitalistic control.

[55] There has long been a shelf in one of the book-stalls of the arcade of the _Odeon_ devoted exclusively to works on Socialism. Whether this device is due to business insight or propagandist fervour, it is equally significant.

[56] Leader of the _Groupe des Socialistes Independants_.

[57] Commemorating the b.l.o.o.d.y Week of the Commune.

[58] Burned at the stake in the sixteenth century.

[59] Some _cooperatives socialistes_ have been established.

[60] Leader of the _Parti Ouvrier Francais_.

[61] Leader of the _Parti Ouvrier Socialiste Revolutionnaire_.

[62] The ill.u.s.tration of the Place Maubert shows one of its humble latter-day distinctions. It is the market-place for the _Megotiers_ of the Quarter, gatherers of cigar and cigarette stubs, who carry canes with which to rake up these tobacco remnants.

[63] Michelet.

[64] Jules Valles.

[65] Whence the word _frondeur_ (captious), currently applied to the students to this day.

[66] La Harpe, the autocrat of the literary world, appeared before his cla.s.s one day in a red Phrygian cap, and devoted a portion of his lecture-hour to declaiming revolutionary _chansons_.

[67] It would be superfluous to name their present habitues, since they are as yet too young to be famous.

[68] The accompanying ill.u.s.tration is a portrait sketch of the son of Felix Gras in his favourite seat at one of these cabarets, above which some artist has scrawled his caricature.

[69] The _Grille_ and the _Noctambules_, the best-known _cafe-concerts_ of the _Quartier_, are purely professional affairs. Their performers are not students, and students make up only a small part of their audiences.

[70] There were martyrs to conviction on both sides in the Dreyfus case, as there were under the last empire.

[71] More than once during the Dreyfus affair the _Quartier_ seemed to be on the verge of an eruption; but the lying, contemptible manuvres of Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards alike threw cold water on both its military and its anti-military enthusiasm.

[72] Haraucourt has recently been elevated to the position of librarian of one of the princ.i.p.al libraries of Paris.

[73] Jacques Le Lorrain has just died of consumption. A short time before his death he had the happiness of having his remarkable poetical play _Don Quixote_ performed at the _Theatre Victor Hugo_.

[74] The _Salons_ were held in the Louvre at this period.

[75] _Deche_ and _puree_ (the latter akin to the Americanism "in the soup") are Bohemian slang for _misere_.

[76] A law which commutes the penalty, but without expunging the condemnation from the record.

[77] Since these lines were written, word has come, alas! that Bibi is dead.

[78] The _Cabaret du Pere Lunette_-on the edge of the Latin Quarter-and its near neighbour, the _Chateau Rouge_ (also called _La Guillotine_), were notorious criminal resorts in the days, not so very remote, before the piercing of the rue Lagrange and the enlarging of the Place Maubert rendered innocuous one of the most dangerous corners of Paris. The _Chateau Rouge_ was recently demolished, and the Pere Lunette ceased several years back to be anything but an insipid show-place for tourists. Neither has ever been an organic part of the _Quartier_ life.

[79] Practical joker seems to be the only possible translation of the word _fumiste_, but it is a most inadequate one.

[80] The rue de Croissant is filled with newspaper offices.

[81] _Se coucher a la belle etoile_ is to be without a lodging other than the pavement.

[82] _Ma tante_ = the p.a.w.n-shop.

[83] A name given to the younger poets of the more eccentric schools.

[84] Discontinued with the discontinuance of its provocation, the fete of the _Buf Gras_.

[85] Pere la Pudeur, a name applied originally to the French Anthony Comstock, M. Berenger.

[86] The _Bal Gavarni_ and the _Bal Monnier_ held at Montmartre in 1902 and 1904 respectively-as a tribute to the memory of two great French caricaturists-and the open-air Montmartre festivals, _Le Couronnement de la Rosiere Montmartroise_ (1903) and _Le Mariage de la Rosiere Montmartroise_ (1904), though similar in conception to the cavalcade of the _Vache Enragee_, proved less effective from this particular point of view.

[87] Henry Murger.

[88] _Demenager a la cloche de bois_ is to move secretly without paying one's rent.

[89] The _Rat Mort_ has completely changed its character of late years.

Only at the _dejeuner_ and the dinner hours is any hint of its former self obtainable.

[90] The slope from these boulevards to the rue de Lamartine and the rue St. Lazare (between the rue de Clichy and the rue de Rochechouart) is affiliated with Montmartre, and by a stretching of the point may be said to belong to it; but its population is too largely made up of bourgeois and the exploiting _cocottes_ of the _Olympia_, _Moulin Rouge_, _Casino de Paris_, and _Folies-Bergeres_ to admit of its being absolutely co-ordinated with the b.u.t.te.

[91] Called _logement_ to distinguish it from the _appartement_, which is more pretentious. The kitchen of the _logement_ is provided with running water and gas; and the gas company is required by law to furnish the tenant who does not pay more than 500 francs a year rent a new gas range, _gratis_. Ateliers are relatively dearer, and the artist does not easily find an atelier in which he can live and work for less than 600 francs.

[92] Recently deceased.

[93] At Montmartre, as in all parts of Paris, hand-carts may be hired for a few sous an hour.

[94] _Cyrano de Bergerac._

[95] A seaside resort.

[96] It is not a rare thing for a Montmartre organ to speak of a trip to the Grands-Boulevards or the Latin Quarter as "_un depart vers les pays etrangers designes sous le nom des Etats-Unis de Paris_."

[97] The word _hydropathe_ was absolutely without significance in this connection. It was. .h.i.t upon by the merest chance, and welcomed because it suggested nothing that could mislead or occasion dispute.