Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2. Edwards Henry Sutherland

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ my wine.” “It is your own fault, sir,” was the reply. “You were not due till four o’clock, and it is now hardly three.”

      Our gallery of Paris types would scarcely be complete without a sketch of a very familiar personage who, though not peculiar to Paris, abounds there more than in other capitals. This is the “rentier,” the man of “small, independent means.” According to the etymology of the word, anyone should be called a rentier who lives on his “rentes” – the income, that is to say, derived from the letting of houses or farms; or the interest of money invested in the Funds. In practice, however, the name is given exclusively to the man who lives on the interest of money which he has invested in government securities. He has been described as the corresponding type, in English society, to the man retired from business. He lives modestly in the quarter of the Marais or of the Batignolles, as in England he might live at Clapham or Brixton, at Holloway, or Camden Town; and he passes a considerable portion of his time in some favourite café, reading a newspaper of moderate-liberal politics, or playing at dominoes. Condemned to economy, sometimes of the most parsimonious kind, he counts every lump of sugar brought to him by the waiter, and shows a great predilection for halfpenny rolls. In politics, without being an aristocrat, he is something of a conservative; and, while stickling for his rights, hates revolutions as sure to cause perturbations in the securities of the state.

      It was doubtless a rentier from whose pocket the thief in Lord Lytton’s “Pelham” extracted, in a Paris café, a tiny packet which he had seen the owner put carefully away in his coat-tail pocket, and which, on being adroitly stolen and curiously examined, was found to contain, not a precious stone, but a lump of sugar. In the rentier’s defence it may be mentioned that during the great Napoleonic war, when a universal blockade had been declared against English exports, and when colonial produce was everywhere excluded from the ports of France, the price of sugar rose to such a height as to render this luxury difficult for persons of straitened means to indulge in.

      The existence of such a number of rentiers in Paris goes far to demonstrate the prudence of the ordinary Frenchman. An Englishman with a few thousand pounds in his possession would, as a rule, speculate with it, instead of burying it in the Funds. The speculation would furnish him with active employment, whereas the permanent investment preferred by the average Frenchman involves an idle and somewhat ignoble life.

      CHAPTER V.

      PARISIAN CHARACTERISTICS

Parisian Characteristics – Gaiety, Flippancy, Wit – A String of Favourite Anecdotes

      IN our last few chapters we have been glancing about Paris for different types of character. These are sufficiently varied even where they are not absolutely dissimilar from each other. But there is one characteristic which runs through the whole of them; the Parisian, be he great or small, rich or poor, never loses his national gaiety. He laughs through his tears and sometimes jests with his last breath.

      This gaiety finds expression in manifold ways, and shows itself above all in innumerable anecdotes. If, as Dr. Johnson maintained, the dullest book is worth wading through if only it contains a couple of good anecdotes, no apology need be made for presenting in this chapter a few of those “bonnes histoires” in which Parisians delight, and which so often illustrate their character.

      Let us begin with one which is very French and particularly Parisian. A poverty-stricken author, awaking suddenly at midnight, discerned in his garret a burglar feeling in his empty cash-box. The author burst into a laugh. The burglar, annoyed to find himself an object of ridicule, inquired what the author could find so particularly amusing. “A thousand pardons,” was the polite reply, “but I could not help smiling to see you searching in the dark for what I shall be unable to find in the daylight.”

      A Parisian had been accustomed for twenty years to pass his evenings at the house of a certain Mme. R – . He lost his wife, and everyone expected he would marry the lady whom he had so assiduously visited. When however, his friends urged him to do so, he refused, saying, “I should no longer know where to pass my evenings.”

      A general who had been beaten in Germany and in Italy perceived one day, hanging over his door, a drum inscribed with this device: “I am beaten on both sides.”

      The Regent of Orleans wished to go to a masked ball without being recognised. “I know how to manage it,” said the Abbé Dubois. During the ball he set the Regent on his guard against disclosing his identity, by dint of sundry admonitory kicks. The victim, finding the clerical foot by no means a light one, whispered, “My dear Abbé, you disguise me too much.”

      A French soldier, not knowing how otherwise to pass his time, entered the fashionable church of Saint-Roch. When the woman who receives money for the use of chairs approached him and asked for five sous, “Five sous?” he exclaimed. “If I had five sous I should not be here.”

      A lady had a spoilt child, whose praises she was never tired of sounding. “Your child is delightful,” said a visitor. “At what time does he go to bed?”

      Someone, in presence of the Abbé Trublet, was praising one day the soft seductive manners of Mme. de Tencin, who was fascinating but without principle. “Yes,” said the abbé, “if she wished to poison you she would use the sweetest poison she could find.”

      A Paris cabdriver, much vexed by the success of the omnibus, then just introduced, determined to start an opposition. He proposed to take passengers at four sous a head, and put this inscription outside his vehicle: “Fiacribus at four sous.”

      A Parisian boy was receiving a long lecture from his father on the subject of his inattention, no matter what good advice might be given to him. The boy lowered his head and seemed to be earnestly engaged in listening to his parent’s observations. Suddenly, however, he exclaimed, “Ninety-nine – one hundred! That is the hundredth ant, father, that has gone into that little hole since you have been talking to me.”

      A Parisian, who could not brook contradiction, fought fourteen duels by way of maintaining his opinion that Dante was a greater poet than Petrarch. When dying from the effects of a wound received in his last encounter, he admitted to a friend that he had never read a line of either poet.

      A Parisian candidate for the degree of bachelor in letters was being examined in history. He gave satisfactory answers to every question until at last he was asked when Charlemagne lived. “Eight centuries before Christ,” he replied. “You mean after Christ?” said the questioner with a smile. “I am sorry to disagree with the board of examiners,” answered the young man with some modesty, “but I maintain my opinion that Charlemagne must have lived eight centuries before Christ.” This determined student had, as a matter of course, to be plucked.

      Two daughters of Paris, at the bedside of their dying father, who had gained millions by usury, were shocked to hear the priest, who had just received his confession, enjoin restitution as the only condition on which he could possibly be saved. “For pity’s sake, father,” said the girls, when the priest had left the room, “do nothing of the kind. You will suffer for a short time, but after the first quarter of an hour you will be like a fish in water.”

      An impressionable Paris banker, the owner of immense riches, died of grief on hearing that he had lost everything in the world except 100,000 francs. His pauper brother, on inheriting the sum, died of joy.

      A Parisian husband, to whom his wife rendered but scant obedience, asked her one day, when she was leaving the house, where she was going. “Wherever I like,” she answered. “And when do you propose to come back?” “Whenever I think fit,” she replied. “If you return one moment later,” said the husband, with an air of menace, “I shall have a word with you.”

      A Parisian schoolboy, meeting a little beggar in the street who declared himself to be the most miserable boy alive, СКАЧАТЬ