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him as before. Here is my hand; but on condition that we keep apart hereafter."

The Germans agreed to this proposition, out of respect to English eccentricity; and Drummond left the room, charmed at having got quietly rid of his troublesome admirer. I ought to add that I witnessed neither of these affairs, and, therefore, relate their history at second-hand, which is as safe a hand as a man can have in a duel.

Yet, notwithstanding all the benefits I received, I left Graefenberg before my cure was half completed. The climate, as I have said, was detestable. It rained nearly half the time, even when it was fair weather. The winds were

as cold as if they slept in wet sheets, and blew all the while, without pause or punctuation. The food was an insult to the palate and an injury to the stomach. I knew not the difference in hydropathic physicians, and hoped to find, in some more supportable locality, another as skillful as Priessnitz. D'Hauteville told me of places in his country where I could continue my cure, and, at the same time, practice good French instead of bad German. Thus, after a residence of two months at Graefenberg, I wandered away, in the company of Burroughs; and, now seeking a ruined castle, now a water-cure, traversed middle Germany with all the haunted Rhineland.

SOME

HOW THEY LIVE AT PARIS.

one says that figures cannot lie. They can-pardon me. I conceive that, if a man once sets about it, he can falsify with them as thoroughly as with the boldest of tropes: e. g. vide the tabular statements, mostly in ciphers, drawn up by that able financier, Doem Brown, banker, showing the prospective value of stock of the Pekin and Astrakan R. R. and Canal Company, for the negotiation of whose bonds he is the European agent. No-even by reason of their general character for honesty, ciphers often become the most effective, because unsuspected, instruments of our deception. There is no levity about them. There are no arithmetical jokes-no numerical fancies. They enter little into the service of wits and poets. They wear rather the livery of solid men, of sound capitalists, of corporations real, to the exclusion of souls, of wealthy men, and safe men, of grave, precise, positive men, and so impose upon us by help of association of ideas. Let a man worth $1,000,000, ventricose as the plump zeros that puff up the index value of his estate, or a professor of mathematics, sharp and angular, as a figure 4, state a startling proposition, and it is 9 to 1 that you believe it without examination of its intrinsic probabilities, though you would grant it small faith coming from the mouth of a jovial poor debtor, or a fanciful rhymer. Why, to this day, with the mass of high vulgar, Saturn devouring his children passes for

pure fable, but ancient chronology for a fixed science. The 9 above, then, its great head bowed as if in deep calculation, no loose ends, no waste flourishes, its tail curled snugly up to the chin, like thrifty housekeepers, making both ends meet; and the 1 with its puritanic uprightness, stiff, straight, erect, always number one-let them say what they will, your first impulse is, to take their word for it, and, in five cases out of six, the chances are nine to one that there is not one in nine of us who ever thinks about it a second time. To illustrate my meaning, let me ask if any of you have observed how extremely small is the proportion of you who have given a second thought to it, as arithmetically expressed in this last proposition? I do not like to tell you-but, such is my respect for large majorities, I do not doubt that the rest have done as well to keep their thoughts to themselves.

I have been led in these, and more such, and other reflections, while looking out of my window on to the panorama of Paris. There is food enough for all sorts of reflections in such a spectacle. The particular turn that mine took recently, received its impulse from Armand Husson's statistical work on the Consommations de Paris. For it was to escape the fatigue of continuous second thinking, which its perusal requires, that, like a tired school-boy, I let my eyes wander from its pages, over to the

curious prospect that my window always offers.

After all, if figures can lie, they can tell truth as well, and those of M. Husson are among the honestest of their kind-gathered and set down with much painstaking and conscientiousness. The position he occupies as chief one of the bureaus-what might be called the alimentary bureau-at the prefecture of police, has given him some special advantages for approaching accuracy in the treatment of his subject. Absolute accuracy is impossible. Many of the estimates are calculated on the population of 1851, some on that of other years; of course, they are not strictly true for that of to-day, which is, probably, some 15 per cent. greater. On the whole, the book is a valuable one, and, while reading it, as I finally have, to the end, I could not but be impressed, notwithstanding my distrust of figures, with the possible worth of a statistical view of Paris, as a means of completing and correcting the ordinary views of a passing observer. To present one that should have that merit in any marked degree, I do not here for an instant pretend. The most to be said for what follows is, that the ciphers are mostly borrowed from Husson, de Watteville, Say, and the contributors to the Annuaire de l'Economie Politique-all good authorities-and occasionally from official documents. Their fidelity can, I believe, be relied upon in nearly all cases. Doubtless, great caution is requisite when we would draw large conclusions from them.

The population of Paris (within the walls), in 1851, was 1,053,262, of whom 31,732 were soldiers forming the garrison of Paris, and 54,200 were foreigners. The foreign nationality most largely represented in this capital of the civilized world, is the German-numbering over 12,000 persons; next come in order Belgians, Italians, Swiss, English, Poles, Spaniards, all others together, including Russians and Americans, amounted to 9,147. The number of English is, most probably, something larger now than in that disturbed time. The number of soldiers is considerably less, or, at least, was in 1854, when the garrison of Paris was reduced to 24,692, which is rather smaller than it was in the latter years of the reign of Louis Philippe. In the immediate neighborhood there are many stations for troops

within a radius of four hours' march from the Place de la Concorde, there are probably 60,000 troops.

Only one-half of the inhabitants of Paris are "native here, and to the manner born;" more than eight-tenths of the rest come from the provinces; the remaining fraction are of foreign or unknown origin. Classifying them by professions, we find that 43 per cent. of them are mechanical workers, other 22 per cent. are in receipt of wages or salaries. Drawing another dividing line, that which separates the fed from the unfed classes, we find that one in every 16—as some make it one in every 15— belongs to the latter. This is sad enough, but the table before me, made up from official documents, shows that there is a steady advance for the better on the proportions of the last sixty years. This sixteenth, or 65,264 individuals, are those only who are inscribed on the lists of the bureaux de bienfaisance, those who sue formally in formá pauperis; there are others, who owe all or a large part of their means of existence to the societies of private beneficence, with which Paris abounds. But, if there are but about 66,000 nominally below feeding-mark, there is another large class who live as near as possible to the line of demarcation, and who are constantly exposed to be overwhelmed by any sudden rise in prices, lack of work, attack of sickness, or other misfortune. Thus, during the commercial crisis and short crops in 1846 and 1847, the number of indigents inscribed rose rapidly to 95,177, while, at the same time, the average number of persons, admitted to participate in the benefit of the bread-tickets distributed by the municipal authorities, was 299,387; showingin all a temporarily necessitous population of 394,564 individuals. De Watteville, the highest French authority on the subject, says, in 1847, that in the department of the Seine (including Paris), the indigents are as one to fifteen, the mendicants as one to two hundred and fifty-two.

There are, in round numbers, 315,000 Parisian households (ménages), of which 219,000 inhabit lodgings, whose annual rent is, in no case, over 150 francs ($30) !

There are annually sent into the country, to nurse, 15,000 infants. The mestics sometimes are with us in our nurses are generally procured, as do

66

large towns, at nurse-agencies or offices, and are not generally a good article." To obviate abuses in this kind, the municipal government has established nurse-offices, whose agents take pains to put the babes in kind laps, and to healthy breasts; of 4,000 infants put out to nurse by the municipal administration, the expenses of more than half are paid for by it. Working Paris women cannot afford to spend the time in nursing their own childrenwith the rest it is unfashionable.

The mont de piété is French for Fawnbrokers' shops; but French pawnbroking is very strictly and justly regulated by law. The mont de piété is as much a government establishment as the hospitals, and is as truly a charitable institution. It is the poor man's providence. How, and how frequently, he appeals to it for aid, may be judged by the following figures: The annual "operations" of the Parisian mont de piété, in ordinary times, amount to 20,000,000 francs ($4,000,000). In the year 1853, there were loans demanded of the mont de piété on 1,431,575 articles, for an amount of 24,872,922 francs, by 830,000 borrowers, of whom more than seven-tenths belonged to the working classes. After the workmen come small manufacturers and retail dealers, then rentiers and proprietors, clerks and domestics, and members of the liberal professions. For the small fabricants and traders without credit, the mont de piété serves as a bank, where they do not hesitate to raise loans on occasions of pressing want. The rate of interest is indeed somewhat high, but not so high as they would be forced to pay by the money-lenders.

The average amount of the loans is a trifle less than twenty-one francs, say four dollars. But if some loans rise quite beyond that, as when a lorette in lack of a lover pawns watch and jewels, others, and they are the majority, fall below, as is shown, since I keep to figures, by the appropriation made by the city authorities at the time of the birth of the Imperial Prince. They gave 100,000 francs on that occasion for the "redemption of tools and bedding at the mont de piété," to be applied only to articles on which loans of six francs and under had been allowed, and belonging to persons whose needs and deserts were certified by the managers of the bureaux de bienfaisance. VOL. IX.-17

More than five-sevenths in number of all loans are for fifteen francs and less, and cause an absolute loss to the mont de piété.

The caisse d'épargne is French for savings bank. The accounts of the caisse d'épargne form a natural and pleasing pendant to those of the mont de piété. There are on deposit at the Savings Institution of Paris 47,000,000 francs, placed there by 214,000 depositors, of whom by far the larger part are mechanics and domestics.

More than 82,000 patients were received last year in the public hospitals, of whom about one-quarter came in from the provinces. Besides these, more

than 30,000 patients were visited gratis at their residences, by physicians attached to the bureaux de bienfaisance, who also gave gratuitous advice, at their offices, in 118,000 cases.

In the alms-houses (hospices) and asylumns for the old, infirm, and incurable poor of both sexes, there is an average population of 8,600. The number of foundlings, poor orphans, and children abandoned by their parents, received by the hospices, amounts, in a year, to 3,400, of whom, it is ascertained, that about 600 are not born in Paris.

During the year 1853, there were 34,049 births at Paris, of which 10,833, or something over one-third, were illegitimate. As we are apt to reason erroneously from Paris to France, it may be well to introduce here a few figures from outside the city. The proportion for all France (Paris, of course, included), of illegitimate to legitimate births, has not, in the last thirty-six years, varied beyond the merest fraction from one in thirteen. Now, in Belgium, it is a little more than this; in Saxony it is one in seven; in Bavaria, Baden, and in several other countries of Europe, much greater, and even in England but very little less-one authority making it, for the last-named country, seven to the hundred, and the report of the Registrar-General (for 1845, I think) reading thus: "I can discover no grounds for supposing, that less than 64 in 1,000 English children are illegitimate." The proportion of illegitimate births, taken by itself, is surely no sufficient test of the morality of a nation; but it is often cited as such, to prove the immorality of the French beyond other civilized peoples—with how much reason, the above figures show.

The whole number of individuals supported at any one time, at the expense of the city, either in the hospitals, almshouses and asylums of Paris, or in the country, is 31,219.

There are 63,000 persons in the prisons of the department of the Seine.

The population of the hotels and furnished lodging-houses may be classed as follows: First, those persons, French or foreigners, travelers and mercantile people, for the most part, who occupy the better order of hotels and maisons meublées. There are about 1,100 of these establishments, having accommodations for 20,000 guests; on extra occasions, such as baptismal fêtes, they stretch their borders so as to take in from 30,000 to 35,000 unfortunates. A second and inferior category, numbering 12,000, but sometimes rising to 15,000 or 16,000, occupy furnished lodgings in 1,800 maisons meublées of a plainer sort; finally, there are from 37,000 to 50,000 mechanics, and laborers, and domestics, and other small folk, sleeping in the wretched, ill-furnished rooms of the lowest grade of lodging-houses (garnis), of which there are 3,963 in the capital. Having now some notion of the extent and classifications of the population of Paris, let us see how they support life-how they eat and drink.

I

There are 29,000 dealers in food and drink within the walls. Of these, 4,408 keep wine and liquor-shops; 1,600 others, as a part of their regular business, sell wine, liquors, or some sort of intoxicating drinks; this is exclusive of keepers of restaurants, cafés, inns, and small eating-houses, and several other classes of shops, in all of which wine and brandy are sold by the glass. may be permitted to correct here, the grossly erroneous statements, often made and believed by foreigners who visit the boulevards, to the effect that "there is no drunkenness in France;" "you never see a drunken man in France," and the like. There are in this country, or there were, in 1847, 347,328 places for the sale of intoxicating drinks, that is, nearly one for every one hundred men, women, and children throughout the land; there are sold yearly, in these places, over 250,000,000 gallons of wine, and over 17,000,000 gallons of distilled spirits. Now we might reason, a priori, from this enormous quantity of drink swallowed, that there must be some drunkenness in

France. I might add some results of personal observations made at the barrières on Sundays and Mondays, and, what is weighty as authority, the opinion of De Watteville, who, among the fifteen immediate causes of French pauperism and wretchedness, ranks third in order the use of intoxicating drinks.

Paris is noted, the world over, for the quality of its cookery. Paris cooks an enormous deal of victuals in the course of a twelve-month. Paris is gourmet and gourmand, not to say gluttonous. Victor Borie says, that it eats one-fifth of all the good beef eaten in France. The mother city absorbs the best of victuals as it absorbs the best intellects, the best writers, the best artists, and the best artisans of the whole country. The items of the metropolitan bill of fare for a year are of Pantagruelian proportions. The zeros, and nines, and sixes, and eights, and other of the rotund ciphers, as they parade the quantities of this Gargantuan gobbling and guzzling, seem stouter and paunchier than ever. The reading of them is a feast. have set them down here, reducing kilogrammes to pounds, I have not generally regarded such small matters as hundreds of pounds. Round thousands will convey notions of the city's consumption, sufficiently accurate for the purposes of this view, and more easily retained by the reader's memory. Strict accuracy is, indeed, impossible. M. Husson's estimates are for the population of 1851, excluding the garrison and hospitals, i. e., for 999,066 consumers; to-day the population must be from onc to two hundred thousand greater. So that the estimates given below should be considerably enlarged to meet the truth of to-day.

As I

In the year 1851, then, Paris ate 360,000,000 pounds of bread, and 143,000,000 pounds of butcher's meat, besides over 23,000,000 pounds of swine's flesh, and nearly 23,000,000 pounds of fowls and game, and more than 29,500,000 pounds of fish, together with 19,140,000 pounds of eggs; to this add nearly 11,000,000 pounds of pastry, and 7,000,000 pounds of rice, macaroni, vermicelli, and other prepared breadstuffs, and 500,000 pounds of gingerbread (very bad is the gingerbread). mass of solids was lubricated and helped on its downward way by 22,500,000 pounds of butter, and sweetened by more than 16,000,000 pounds of sugar, and

This

500,000 pounds of honey, to say nothing of 1,200,000 pounds of bonbons, and about 2,000,000 pounds of sweetmeats; it was washed down by 118.000,000 quarts of wine (or drugs and Seine water, that, according to M. Delamarre, make up one-third of what is drank for wine in Paris), 13,500,000 quarts of beer, 2,000,000 of cider (very bad), 12,000,000 of ardent spirits, 100,000,000 of milk, over 1,000,000 of liqueurs. The town, furthermore, consumes in liquid form nearly 7,000,000 pounds of coffee, and over 2,000,000 pounds of chocolate. In the way of vegetables, it eats 300,000,000 pounds of fresh, and 17,000,000 pounds of dry, "garden sarse," besides about 420,000,000 pounds of fresh fruit, and over 7,000,000 of dried fruits, and 4,500,000 pounds of oranges and lemons. The whole is seasoned with 12,000,000 pounds of salt, 600,000 pounds of mustard, 295,000 pounds of pepper and other spices, and 297,000 pounds of pickles, 4,000,000 quarts of oil, and as many of vinegar. Such are some of the principal items of the table of Paris.

In the year 1854, Paris chewed, snuffed, and smoked, 3,800,000 pounds of tobacco, for which it payed 17,725,263 francs (more than $3,500,000). This poor justice must be done to the Parisians and to the French in general, that few of them are guilty of our peculiarly disgusting American form of tobacco-vice. The quantity of the weed masticated is to that snuffed and smoked, as one to sixty-two, and has not increased per annum since 1839. The habit of taking snuff is on the decrease; that of smoking, on the contrary, has been of late years, and still is, in course of wonderful development. Formerly it was deemed an essentially vulgar practice, and was mainly confined to the estaminets; from them it spread to students' rooms and artists' attics, then reached the clubs, at last invaded families, and "the totality of the street," and is now à la mode with all classes. As you are aware, the emperor and empress both smoke. If they had not a taste for tobacco, they might still indulge in, or rather subject themselves to, its use, by way of setting an example, which his majesty has strong politico-economical reasons for wishing to, see generally imitated. Between 1839 and 1854, the

consumption of tobacco in all France nearly doubled in quantity. Whatever may be the vicious effect of the noxious weed on the popular health, this increased consumption helps to plump up the government finances curiously. The manufacture and sale of tobacco is, as my readers are aware, a state monopoly; but they are, perhaps, not aware of what M. Husson assures us is the fact, that it produces a clear yearly profit (bénéfice net) of more than 100,000,000 of francs, or one-fifteenth of all the receipts of the public treasury.

After eating, and drinking, and smoking Paris, comes, naturally enough, as if for digestion, riding Paris. I should say here, that this view of Paris on wheels is very imperfect, inasmuch as it does not include large classes of vehicles, such, for example, as those that do the heavy carting and nocturnal dirty work, water-carts, market-wagons, scavengercarts, etc., etc. Of carriages of all sorts for the transport of persons, habitually circulating, though not all owned in the city, there are 11,765, drawn by 40,000 horses. Of saddle-horses, there are 3,000. Place yourself on the Boulevard des Italiens, and you may see pass, in the course of twenty-four hours, 10,750 wheeled vehicles, of which nearly 9,000 are appropriated solely to the conveyance of persons. A curious calculation shows that, in a twelvemonth, 25,000,000 rides are taken in omnibuses, and 18,000,000 in hired carriages. Besides these, 13,000,000 persons yearly pass in or out of the city by the different rail-roads, and four other millions by the diligences and other public conveyances.

So much of Paris as likes, and can afford it, goes after dinner to spend the evening in twenty-two theatres and opera-houses, where there are 29,000 seats, where, last year, 213 new pieces were brought out, where spectators pay annually over 12,000,000 francs for their entertainment. Others go to cafés. circuses, public balls, suburban theatres, concerts, and other numberless places of nightly amusement. Apart from what the public pay directly, there are five theatres, namely, the Française, the Odeon, the Grand Opera, the Opera Comique, and the Italian Opera, which together receive allowances from the state to the amount of 1,500,000 francs.

When all is over, Paris retires to

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