The Amazing City
9781465649553
118 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
In my almost daily perambulations through the brilliant, through the drab, and through the ambiguous quarters of Paris, I constantly come upon street scenes that bring me inquisitively to a standstill. Not that they are particularly novel or startling. Indeed, to the Parisian they are such banal, everyday spectacles that he passes them by without so much as a glance. But for me, familiar though I am with the physiognomy of the Amazing City, these street scenes, amusing or pathetic, sentimental or grim, possess an indefinable, a never-failing charm. For instance, I dote on a certain ragged, weather-beaten old fellow who is always and always to be discovered, on a boulevard bench, under a dim gas-lamp, at the precise hour of eleven. Across his knees—unfolded—a newspaper. And spread forth on the newspaper, scores and scores of cigarette ends and cigar stumps, which have been industriously amassed in the streets, and on the terraces of cafés, during the day. Every night, on this same boulevard bench, at the same hour of eleven, the old fellow counteth up his spoil. “Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven,” he mutters. “Eh bien, le vieux, how are affairs?” asks a policeman. But the old fellow, bent in half over the newspaper, hears him not. When—O joy!—he comes upon a particularly fine bit of cigar, he holds it up to the gas-lamp, measures it closely with his eye, then packs it carefully away in his waistcoat pocket. But when—O gloom!—he has a long run of bad luck in the way of wretched, almost tobaccoless cigarette ends, he breaks out into guttural expressions of indignation and disgust. The night wears on. Up go the shutters of the little wine-shop opposite. Rarely a passer-by. Scarcely a sound. “One hundred and two. One hundred and three. One hundred and four,” counts the weather-beaten old fellow under the gas-lamp. Then, the street singers of Paris, with harmonium, violin and a bundle of tender, sentimental songs. Four of them, as a rule; four men in jerseys, scarlet waistbands and blue corduroy trousers. They, too, come out particularly at night and establish themselves under a gas-lamp. And all around them stand charming, bareheaded girls from the neighbouring blanchisseries and milliners’ shops; and the adorers of those maidens—young, amorous MM. Georges, Ernest and Henri—from the grocer’s, the butcher’s, the printer’s; and workmen and charwomen and concierges; and probably a cabman or two, and most likely a soldier, a lamp-lighter, a policeman.
