XXVII.
THE UNDER-WORLD OF PARIS.
THE IMMORALITY AND LICENTIOUSNESS OF THE CAPITAL.—COMPARISON WITH OTHER CITIES.—FRENCH ETHICS AND LITERATURE.—DIFFERENT GRADES OF THE DEMI-MONDE.—THE TRUE STORY OF CAMILLE.—THE GARDENS ON THE SEINE.—THE DANCES AND THE DANCERS.—THE PETITS SOUPERS OF THE COCOTTES.—AFTER-MIDNIGHT SCENES.—ACTRESSES AND CHAMPAGNE.—ADVENTURESSES AND CHÂTEAU MARGAUX.—INTERIOR OF A THIEF’S DEN AND MURDERER’S CELLAR.—BLOODTHIRSTY VIRAGOES AND DESPERATE CUTTHROATS.
The demi-monde is aptly named; for, while it is so eminently worldly, the world rejects it, and in most instances assumes to be unconscious of its existence. In the French capital it is accepted as a fact, and it can hardly be any more dangerous there on that account, than it is in cities where it is ignored. The French have gained the reputation, but without any good reason, of being much more immoral than other nations. We Americans are constantly asserting this, and our iteration has had the effect, no doubt, of inducing us to believe that we are a great deal better than they. Our assumptions are unquestionably loftier, and we are more anxious to hide our defects; but that we have fewer vices, setting aside our pretences, and stripping off our shams, must not be too hastily admitted. It is to the disadvantage of the modern Gauls that on many subjects they are inclined to say what they think, while we are disposed to think what we do not say. They, too, take human nature as they find it, as it has been from the first; having no expectation of changing it by shutting it up on one side, and giving it free vent on the other.
French authors are not at all squeamish or puritanical, andare addicted to the treatment of themes which we discuss only in private. The cities of France, notably Paris, do not robe themselves in external sanctity, careless of the inner quality of their ethical raiment, and, on account of their openness of speech and deportment, they are gravely misjudged.
THE WORST CITY IN THE WORLD.
Paris is bad enough, Heaven knows; but that it is the wickedest city on the globe, as is frequently asserted, must be taken with large grains of allowance. The wickedest of cities are numerous. Not only has Paris that reputation, but Vienna, Naples, St. Petersburg, Berlin, London, New York, have it also. Even Boston, the centre of the land of steady habits and high moral ideas, is pronounced by many persons, who know it intimately, as unequalled for private profligacy. Stockholm, in the far and frozen north, where the temperature might be fancied to freeze the evil passions before they could have full play, has often been declared more immoral than Paris, Naples, Vienna, or London. In proportion to the population, there are more illegitimate children born in Stockholm, it is said, than in any other capital of Europe; and as marriage is held to be the best and purest condition of men and women, this extraordinary extent of illegitimacy must be interpreted to the Swedish city’s discredit.
It is all folly to arraign any particular community as worse than another. Communities are like the individuals who make them up. This has certain defects which that has not. Circumstances and conditions produce different results in different places; but, on the whole, mankind, when thoroughly understood, will be found very similar in most of the centres of civilization.
As Paris is acknowledged to be the capital of gayety and pleasure, and as morals are left there to take their natural course rather than to be hampered without benefit, Paris is the best place to observe human nature in its disapproved relations. The demi-monde is opposed to the grand-monde, and ought to represent, therefore, not only women of a peculiar class, but the members of both sexes whom society, as the expression of conventionality, refuses to acknowledge. Thedemi-monde, in this sense, means the under-world, nowhere so interesting a study as on the Seine.
CHARACTER OF THE UNDER-WORLD.
Outwardly, the French capital is most decorous. Vice shows like virtue because it is relieved of grossness; even more, is softened and rounded with grace. You do not see there, as in London or New York, repulsive and revolting scenes. You do not encounter drunken and disgusting men: you do not hear women, who have unsexed themselves, indulging in ribaldry and profanity in the public thoroughfares, or anywhere else in fact. Everybody and everything appears so proper that inexperienced and innocent souls have expressed their astonishment at the ill fame the city has acquired, and have concluded that its bad name is undeserved. Promenading on the Boulevards or riding on the Champs Elysées, they are unable to distinguish the Faubourg St. Germain from the Quartier Latin—the upper-world from the under-world.
GRAND AVENUE OF THE CHAMPS ELYSEES, PARIS.
GRAND AVENUE OF THE CHAMPS ELYSEES, PARIS.
It is estimated that more than fifty thousand of the women of Paris live in a state of concubinage, which, in a population of two millions, is something enormous. The proportion is startling, but more from the facility attained there for procuring statistics than from the fact itself. Actualities, whether painful or not, are known and recorded in that capital, instead of being unsuspected, as they are likely to be elsewhere. This vast number of unchaste women are by no means professional courtesans,—probably five thousand would include all of these,—but embrace half a dozen grades of illicit relations.
CAUSE OF PARISIAN WICKEDNESS.
The causes that contribute to prostitution in France are, first, the unwillingness of men of education and position to marry girls who are poor, and can therefore have no marriage portion. Wedlock among the Parisians is far less sentimental and romantic than it is with us. It a species of one-sided covenant and partnership, in which the wife is expected to be loyal, and the husband to do as he pleases. He cares less for sympathy and affinity than he would if he did not expect to seek them outside of the domestic circle. He marriesgenerally for practical reasons; because it will benefit him socially, or be of substantial advantage. In consequence of this, young women in humble circumstances are little likely to be wedded. They have hearts if they have not incomes, and when their affections are enlisted, they listen to the voice of Nature without waiting for the sanction of the priest. It is not the custom, either, in France for men or women to wed out of their station, though love or passion does not respect social lines or distinctions in that country more than in any other. Hence it may be seen that unwedded wives must be numerous in Paris.
Another cause is the draft that the army makes upon the young men of the country. Compelled to enter the military service before they are married, their habits are such, after they have remained in the army the allotted time, as do not conduce to matrimony. The whole land is drained for the sake of steel-and-gunpowder parade. Thousands and tens of thousands of people who have no interest whatever in, and are only made the worse for, war, are compelled to furnish its sinews at a ruinous cost to themselves.
Still another cause is the number of illegitimate children, who, regarded as the children of the state, are reared and educated by the state, and at a certain age are left to provide for themselves. Many of the young men seek military service, while the young women, for the most part, become what their mothers have been before them. Their tastes and their ideas are superior to their rank. They are unwilling to look for husbands in a lower grade, and cannot secure them in a higher. Gallants and lovers, however, are abundant and persevering, and under the circumstances seldom woo in vain. France, moreover, tolerates, if it does not encourage, relations that other countries raise their hands in holy horror at. It does not act on the conviction that the absence of one virtue expels all the other virtues; it refuses to brand and ostracize a woman because she has merely been unfortunate, or to make her responsible for the wrong she has sustained at the hands of man. France, it must be admitted, is juster towomen than other nations are, for it gives them an opportunity to be independent and advance themselves, even though they have committed what we might regard as the unpardonable sin.
THE DIFFERENT GRADES.
The first circle of the demi-monde in Paris and other French cities, though it is not so called, includes the educated and rather refined women I have mentioned, who from poverty, dependence, or want of fixed position, cannot marry in the rank to which they properly belong. Their antecedents shape their destiny, and they hardly regard the relation they have been accustomed to consider inevitable as they would regard it had they been differently trained, and had the ethics of the nation been less liberal.
The second circle is represented largely by the grisettes. Many of them marry, and live domestically all their lives; but many others have a gay and coquettish disposition, prefer lovers to husbands, excitement to routine, display to conventionality, and the exhilarations of to-day to the serenities of to-morrow. These are truly of the half world, for they are half married, and yet wholly independent. They live with their masculine friends; take care of their apartments; are their companions at concerts, balls, and theatres, in the evening; and yet they have their regular daily duties at the shops where they are employed. They are not isolated; they have society of their own; are contented, cheerful, and often enjoy themselves better than the women who have been honored by wedlock.
The most showy and best defined type of the demi-monde is the adventuress, who is the popular representative of the entire class. The French playwrights have delineated her fully, and made her familiar to everybody. “Camille,” and “The Marble Heart,” have heroines of this sort. The former drama treats her sentimentally, and the latter cynically. She is not so generous and self-sacrificing as Camille, nor so selfish and sordid as Marco. After Alexandre Dumas wrote “Camille,” and achieved such astonishing success, another Parisianlittérateurcomposed “The Marble Heart” as an offset to it, declaring Marco to be the real, instead of the ideal lorette.
TRUE STORY OF CAMILLE.
The story of “Camille,” or “La Dame aux Camelias,” as it is termed in the original, is founded very largely on fact. The central figure of Dumas’ pathetic drama had genuine existence. Her name was Marie Duplessis. She was as lovely in person and as elegant in manner as she is portrayed on the stage. Indeed, the theatric picture was almost a photograph, and the incidents of Marie’s life have been closely followed. The Armand was a young and excessively romantic physician, who, having met the beautiful cocotte at an opera ball, fell so desperately in love with her that he wished to make her his wife. She had too much good sense and prudence, independent of feeling, to permit such a sacrifice; but his devotion and generosity touched her nearly, and soon awoke an answering passion. In spite of her errors, she seems to have been intrinsically a fine and noble woman, who, under favorable circumstances, might have been pure and true. So much was she impressed by his chivalry that she cast off her admirers, purchased a handsome villa near Versailles, and begged her new lover to share it with her. He did so; for he was infatuated with Marie, and would not listen to the sober counsels of his family and friends. His father, in very moderate circumstances, was sorely troubled at the conduct of his son, who had no thought nor care for anything but his mistress. The old gentleman, unable to influence the head-strong boy, sought an interview with the lady of the camellias, and begged her to break off the connection. She undertook the task, and succeeded where his family had failed. Her success, however, was obtained at the expense of truth and her own heart; for she made her lover believe that her attachment to him was waning.
Armand, with all the gloom of the Inferno weighing upon his spirits, went to Italy, trusting that absence and travel would enable him to forget the woman he now deemed unworthy of him. He was gone a twelvemonth. He bore separation much better than she, as men usually do. Before half that time the charming lorette fell ill and died. The doctors asserted that her ailment was consumption, but the poets insistedit was a clear case of broken heart. Her death, with her previous history and romantic reformation, moved the curiosity and appealed to the sentiment of Paris, especially after the tale had been told in gushing style, and in any number of short paragraphs in one of the gossipping journals.
When the villa at Versailles was advertised for sale, with its elegant furniture and dainty articles of virtu, a crowd gathered, and the bidding was so spirited by reason of active competition, that everything brought nearly double its actual value. Dumas, then quite young, was present, and secured, as a memento, a handsome ring which Marie had worn.
Six months after, some one called at Dumas’ house to see him personally. The author found the stranger to be a pale and melancholy young man, who said he had come with the hope of buying the ring that had been purchased at the sale. Further conversation revealed the fact that the stranger had been Marie’s lover; that he had given her the ring; and now, overwhelmed by the news of her death, of which he had just been apprised, he begged, as a special favor, that he might be permitted to purchase what to him had such inestimable value.
Dumas, deeply touched by the story, insisted upon making a present of the trinket to the bereaved youth, and afterwards wrote out the tender tale which has since drawn tears from half the world.
CHARACTER OF THE ADVENTURESS.
The adventuress is usually favored by nature, and carries her fair face and symmetrical form to the best market. If not handsome, she is winning, has greatchic, clear insight, a thorough understanding, and the weaknesses of our common humanity.
Good and kind at first, she has become what man has made of her; and in the vocation she has chosen, vanity and self are her impelling powers. Her beauty is a commodity she offers to the highest bidder. She receives large sums, but she squanders them recklessly; for display is almost the only passion of her being. She shines in the Bois; bets desperately at Baden; turns heads at Vienna; shocks the proprietiesof London; dashes resplendent along the Nevski, in the height of the gayeties of Petersburg; creates a sensation at Florence; astonishes the staid Germans at Berlin; interrupts the opera at Madrid; and finally, furnishes the subject of a letter for the New York Herald.
CAREER AND FATE OF A COQUETTE.
Her career is necessarily brief, for her reign must end when years begin to tell. Between twenty and thirty-five her golden harvest must be gathered. Not unfrequently she dies by her own hand; but oftener she has learned prudence ere her charms have waned, and is contrite when it is no longer easy or graceful to sin. It is a great mistake to suppose that the adventuress is invariably drawn out of the Seine, and exposed at the Morgue. No longer able to repeat her triumphs, she likes to withdraw from Paris, in some retired town seek the consolations of religion, and bestow charity upon the poor. She is more interesting at forty than in the flush of her glowing youth; since then the flame of her self-love has been allowed to smoulder, and the radiance of her true womanhood returns once more.
The fourth circle of the demi-monde are those priestesses of Venus who sin without satisfaction, and laugh without gayety. They are not materially different in Paris from what they are in other cities. They have gone down by slippery and sable steps, but not to a level with despair. They do not despair and live, in the air of France; for with despair comes the pan of charcoal. They have intervals akin to cheerfulness, and highly-spiced sensations bounding from pleasure to delirium. They need not cease to hope or fear, since there is still a deeper deep; and that is the fifth circle, whose representatives frequent the streets at night, the cheaper cafés, and the common gardens, in search of means to continue in their horrid trade. Even these are not so degraded as the same kind of unfortunates are with us. They do not drink; they do not swear; they do not importune strangers rudely; they do not from the first disgust in their effort to attract. They have apartments of their own, a certain kind of society and a species of freedom that women, however fallen, alwaysenjoy in France. They are not labelled outcasts, as in England and America, and therefore, in their darkest hours, they have glimpses of the heaven of hope. Careless and improvident as they are in their youth, they frequently provide for the future as years go on, and come to their end through confession and ecclesiastical forgiveness of all their transgressions.
THE LOWEST CLASSES.
The sixth class, the lowest and last of the semi-mundanes, are more nearly pariahs than any others of their kind. They rarely make any provision for to-morrow, since to-morrow is as dismal and as painful as to-day. Almost always in want, their wastefulness is such that they would be poor if every month were marked by a shower of gold. It is they who accost strangers at night on the Boulevards; ask loungers in the cafés to buy coffee and wine for them; makeposesand smoke cigars in the streets; and are sometimes arrested for brawls, intoxication, and pilfering. When they have reached this grade of degradation they cannot go back; they cannot stand still; they cannot fall lower. They put formidable obstacles in their proper path, and are their own worst enemies. Such elasticity and endurance as they may have is soon spent. Before a great while, a damp cellar or dingy garret is broken open, a suffocating odor is perceived, the rude bed holds a corpse; a brazier of charcoal tells the story, and adds another to the countless tragedies which invariably keep the balance with life.
BALL AT MABILLE, PARIS.
BALL AT MABILLE, PARIS.
The gardens of Paris, like the Mabille, the Closerie de Lilas, the Château Rouge, and many others reveal another feature of the under-world. The Mabille, to which strangers generally go, is the least indecorous, and, I may add, the dullest. There half a dozen couples, the women being generally of the lowest demi-monde class, are paid so much per night for dancing of the most extraordinary sort. What it lacks in delicacy is made up in energy. The greatest ambition of the cocottes is to kick the hats from the heads of their partners, and to throw their drapery into the wildest confusion. Their movements belong rather to gymnastics than the quadrille,which they pretend to execute, and when their leaping and plunging begin to pall upon the spectators, they have recourse to the shamefully indecent can-can.
MABILLE, CHÂTEAU ROUGE, AND PRADO.
The Mabille draws strangers, as honey draws flies. Eminently respectable and altogether staid persons go there, and closely observe the dancers, without any apparent disapproval too, when they would be supremely shocked at home at the slightest intimation of such licentious conduct. I have observed pious matrons from New England watching the saltatorial goddesses through their spectacles, as they might watch the gambols of unknown animals. The Mabille soon grows wearisome, and few persons frequent it on their second visit to Paris.
The Château Rouge is a more extended, demonstrative, and free-and-easy place of resort than the Mabille. It is much more democratic also; the prices of admission for men (women are admitted without charge) being one franc, instead of three. To encourage attendance, prizes are offered to those who shall be present the greatest number of nights during the season, and the announcement of the prizes is placarded upon the wall, so that every one may see them. Silk gowns are the temptations for the gentler, and watches for the sterner sex. I should imagine that some of the girls expected a reward for lifting their gaiters in a direct line above their heads, so often do they attempt it, and so generally do they succeed.
The Closerie de Lilas, called the Prado in winter, is the place where the students and the grisettes go in crowds, and where they whirl and make merry for the pure love of the thing. The attendance is very large on Thursday and Sunday nights, when I have seen five or six hundred persons of both sexes, flushed with wine, and dancing like mad dervishes. The revels there are fast and furious enough. License reigns supreme, and Bacchus and Venus seem to inspire the orgies. Paris always limits its public exhibitions, and minions of the law are ever present to keep licentiousness within bounds. Without stimulants the grisettes and cocottes become wildwith excitement as the music of Offenbach pours out under the sky to infect them with its sensuous frenzy. Doubtless the students and their lemans enjoy themselves to the utmost; for they could not counterfeit enjoyment so excellently. They smoke, and drink, and laugh, and talk, and chat, and caper together without the smallest reserve or restraint, as if they had not, and never would have, any other thought than of the present moment and its absorbing pleasure.
A DELIRIUM OF DANCING.
When the weather is unfavorable, they have their balls in a large, covered space; and to see and hear them leaping, tumbling, screaming, and roaring in one confused and palpitating mass, impresses the self-contained and impassive Anglo-Saxon very strangely. Those French revellers have few concealments. They do their wooing in the presence of hundreds; they have their little quarrels in the midst of their carnival of glee. Elise appeals to Jacques with shrugs and starts, and streaming eyes; and Victoire complains of neglect, and emphasizes his jealousy to Marguerite before the giddy throng, as if they were in the privacy of their own apartments. They make up their differences with petting words and copious caresses, and enact their melodramas regardless of curious eyes and smiling lookers-on.
There are resorts, and not a few, in Paris, of a more private character, where decorum is not observed, and where restraint is not practised. All evil passions are there let loose, and vices revealed that would be repulsive to any but morbid minds. Such shameful entertainments are declared to be in imitation of ancient Grecian revels and Roman rites. The claim is noteworthy, for Paris, in its most revolting and secret sins, never forgets to assure itself and the external world that such entertainments are sanctioned by classicism. These may be imagined: they certainly cannot be described.
FAST SUPPERS.
Thepetits soupersof the under-world are reckoned by many among the attractions of the French capital. They occur at many of the restaurants, though at Peter’s and the Café Helder they are given with the most flavor. These little suppers begin after midnight, and continue until dawn, andthough the best of them are private, the public ones, or rather those in public places, have enticements for the masculine mind, on account of the eccentric women to be found at them. At Peter’s and the Café Helder are spacious saloons, provided with small tables; and about one o’clock in the morning, parties of gayly-dressed ladies, with their gallants, and often without gallants, begin to arrive. Many come in carriages, but some on foot, albeit the pedestrians are attired like stage queens. The majority of the women are lorettes, of different grades, but not a few of them are the inferior actresses of the Gaîté, Variétés, and Gymnase, and the ballet girls of the Vaudeville, Ambigu, and Folies Dramatiques. There they completely unbend, cast reserve to the breezes, take easy positions, chatter like magpies, blow small clouds of smoke at the frescoed ceiling, or keep time to the clinking of champagne glasses with their symmetrical feet. Those unescorted are entirely willing to be invited to partake of salads, ices, or wines by the gentlemen who drop in from mere curiosity, or from a desire to make feminine acquaintances.
Between two and three o’clock the sexes become adjusted to each other; everybody is eating and talking, drinking and smoking, at the same time. The handsome rooms resound with feasting and merriment. Glasses rattle, forks clatter, tongues wag, songs are sung, toasts given amid the highest glee and enthusiasm.
Standing in a chair, with a beaker of sparkling Clicquot, is the pretty soubrette of the Gymnase, making a mock-heroic speech; and at the end of every sentence she is greeted with the clapping of hands and loud huzzas. Near her the graceful danseuse of the Folies, encircled by the arms of the dramatic critic of theFigaro, is offering a toast in a goblet of Château Margaux, and at the other end of the saloon, two brunette deities are giving a bit of the can-can, in the midst of vociferous cheering.
Stretched on a velvet sofa, her heels elevated above her head, Marie Basquinette, a famous adventuress, who has justcome from London, is entertaining her listeners with a droll account of the awkwardnesses and stupidities of the English. (Whenever the French wish to be particularly funny, they always caricature John Bull; and many of them really believe that no Briton can, by any possibility, appear other than uncouth and ridiculous.)
The French prints of well-dressed carousals with which we are so familiar, might be actual photographs of thepetits soupersand their surroundings at the Café Helder. As the night wanes apace, and as the east grows gray, the revellers begin to disappear. There is something ghastly in the daylight surprise after a debauch, and the Parisians flee from it as if it brought sermons and endless prayers.
THE DANGEROUS CLASSES OF PARIS.
What we should call the dangerous classes would seem, from the fair outside of Paris, to have no existence there; and yet, as the police well know, many of the most cunning thieves, audacious burglars, and desperate scoundrels are native and to the manner born. They keep out of sight by day, and are rarely seen in the fashionable quarters, unless they have some special mission of villany. These fellows have their organizations and their amusements, and herd together and hold nocturnal revel in out-of-the-way dens, where no one but the gendarme or government spy would think of looking for them.
Having some desire to become acquainted externally with French scoundrels, I mentioned my desire to a private detective, who promised to take me to the district known as the Batignolles, where, he said, many of the choicest miscreants of the city were in the habit of assembling on Sunday nights. He told me that, while there was not likely to be trouble or danger, it would be well to be armed; and so, with two revolvers each, we sprang into a calèche, one stormy Sunday evening, at the Grand Hôtel, and drove to our point of destination.
After nearly an hour’s ride through narrow and dreary streets, over rough pavements, and past malodorous neighborhoods, he stopped before a tall stone building, that looked like a deserted mill.
VISITING A DEN OF THIEVES.
Not a light was visible anywhere, and, as the night was dark, I asked my guide if he were not mistaken in the locality. He assured me that he was not, and, taking my hand, told me he would lead the way. I could see nothing; but after we had stumbled along for a few seconds, a flash of lightning revealed a long, narrow stone staircase before us, and down this we slowly crept. At the base was a heavy oaken door, which appeared as if it might withstand a battering-ram, and I was wondering how we were to open it, when the detective put his mouth to the key-hole, and gave a peculiar whistle. The door swung open at once; we stepped into a dismal vestibule, and were confronted by a huge figure, who grunted out, “Tout bien,” as he recognized my companion, slammed to the door, and bolted it securely. So large a Frenchman I had hardly seen. He was a giant in proportions, and I discovered by a few phrases, that he was an Alsatian. He knew what we wanted, and told us, pointing in the direction, to go to the main hall, where, to translate him freely, the boys were very lively, and having a good time.
A few steps brought us to the hall,—it should have been called a cellar,—and in it were some fifty of the most villanous-looking men and coarsest women I had ever had the misfortune to encounter. It was evident, at a glance, that they were thieves, robbers, and assassins; the slightest acquaintance with phrenology and physiognomy made that clear—that some of them were of the sneak, some of the burglar, and others of the desperado order. The place was dimly lighted with a few sputtering candles; the ceiling was low, and the air mephitic. A few of the men were standing and smoking pipes; but the greater part sat at rough tables drinking and talking in hoarse tones, with vile oaths, on subjects in which it was natural they should be interested.
A murder that had been committed a fortnight before in Marseilles, an account of which had been printed in the Paris journals, occupied much of their attention. They were very laudatory of the skilful manner in which the crime had been perpetrated, and of the adroitness displayed by the criminal ingetting away. They had not a particle of pity for the victim, an old and inoffensive man, whose throat had been cut while he was asleep in bed, that a trunk in his apartment might be broken open and plundered of a thousand francs.
The women, if they might be termed such, were more brutal and bloodthirsty in their dispositions, judging from their expression, than the men themselves. They were, as I was informed, either thieves themselves or aids and accomplices of the thieves. Some of them were what we should style shoplifters; others made it their business to obtain information from servants in regard to private residences, and imparted it to the burglars with whom they consorted.
LOOKING AT A MURDERESS.
One Amazon, who had a mustache and slight whiskers, had committed two murders, the detective said—one in Lyons, and the other in the arrondissement Vaugirard. She had been so adroit that she could not be convicted on trial, though there was not the least shadow of doubt of her guilt. She was a species of she devil in that tophet, and, as I perceived, was looked up to as something of an oracle. She planned many of the boldest robberies, and was herself regarded as absolutely fearless. She must have been very strong; for she was as broad across the shoulders as a grenadier, and her rolled-up sleeves showed that she had muscle like a black-smith. I would much rather have encountered a masculine ruffian and assassin than that virago, who seemed fierce and cruel, not from passion, but from nature. There was a tigress look about her which made my flesh creep and my hair bristle. She appeared so bloodthirsty that I should not have been surprised if she had sprung upon me and fastened her fangs in my neck.
The thieves and robbers in the cellar knew the detective of course, as they know detectives all the world over; nodded to him familiarly, and asked him in an argot—which had to be translated to me—if he had been successful in making any arrests recently.
I observed that they changed their tone of talk as we entered, determined not to give him any clew to their latestcrimes. They continued, however, to discuss the exploits of the members of their profession, and to express the warmest admiration for the greatest scoundrels. It hardly seemed possible that human beings could be so hardened and so vicious, and that they could find their chief gratification in disorder, violation of law, and revolting iniquity. These fellows were more like brutes than men in semblance. Their eyes had a fierce and lurid expression; their mouths were sensual and coarse; their jaws had a heavy, animal-like firmness; and their whole faces were dark and forbidding. I noticed that many of them drank spirits, which is uncommon in France, and that the largest potations did not sensibly affect them.
Three or four of the gang were so repulsive in feature that I felt a curiosity respecting their history, and made inquiry thereabout of the detective.
HISTORY OF A HOUSE-BREAKER.
“That chap sitting down with the short pipe in his mouth,” said the legal bloodhound, “is not more than thirty years old, though he looks nearly fifty. He was born and reared in or near this city, and has been a thief since his earliest child-hood. His father was a noted burglar, and died in prison at Bordeaux, where he had been arrested for an attempt to break into the vault of a bank. The man’s name is Pierre Boudrot; but he is called by his associates the Mad Bull, from his great strength and violent temper. Until he was fifteen or sixteen, he was a petty pilferer; but he afterwards aspired to highway robbery outside the barrières. He prospered in this for some time; but having, as it was suspected, shot and killed a merchant, he was forced to fly to England. Returning three years after, he was apprehended and tried for the crime. No direct evidence could be adduced against him, and he was acquitted. He has been involved in any number of personal encounters with his fellow-villains, and has stabbed and shot at least a dozen of them. Generally speaking, they have refused to testify against him, and he has therefore escaped punishment. He is now a house-breaker, and operates so skilfully that the police seldom have an opportunityto interfere with him. Some sixteen months ago, he was living at Pantin with his mistress, a young woman of some intelligence and so remarkably handsome that it was strange she could fancy so ill-favored a wretch. Having become jealous of her, they had several boisterous quarrels. One morning she was found in bed with her throat cut from ear to ear, and he had disappeared. He was suspected at once, and publication of the fact was made in the newspapers, whereupon he surrendered himself, and during the examination which followed, several of his accomplices swore that the girl had committed suicide, giving many details that rendered their statements plausible. As his witnesses could not be impeached, he was acquitted, and returned to his old calling. He has frequently been seized by policemen while carrying out some nefarious design, but such has been his strength that he has almost always managed to get away. On one occasion he threw an officer of the law from a fourth story window, and broke his neck. Still nothing could be proved upon him, as no one had witnessed the deed. He must ultimately come to the guillotine, however, as he is growing bolder and bolder in his commission of crime, and more reckless of the means he adopts. Intemperance is telling upon him, as you can see by his bloodshot eye and bloated face.
A CRIME-STAINED SCOUNDREL.
“The gray-haired man,” continued the detective, “laughing so loudly, with a broad scar above his eye, has been in nearly every principal prison in France, and yet has never served out a single term. Professional thief as he is, he does not appear to be very vicious or malignant. He has never been known to do any one bodily harm, and is always as cheerful as he is now. He would not be such a bad-looking fellow except for that scar, and the fracture of his nose, which was caused, some years ago, by his jumping from a wagon conveying him to jail.
“The very dark man, sitting on that bench, and swinging his legs, is a Spaniard. He came here from Madrid, where he had been for some years a bull-fighter, and whence he had to fly for poisoning his father to get a little property.Poisoning is his specialty, and he is believed to have disposed of a number of persons in that way. Whenever he takes life, he has, of course, a purpose in it, and he has come into possession of a good deal of money by the deaths he has brought about. A greater villain than he probably never breathed: he seems to have no more objection to committing murder than he has to smoking a cigar; and he is known as Pedro the Killer—a nickname of which he is really proud.”
THE GREATEST SCAMP IN PARIS.
“There is a young person I have not noticed before,” I said to my companion, pointing to the left. “Who is he? He can’t be a thief. He must have gotten into this company by mistake. Is he a gentleman seeking for acquaintance with underground life, like myself?”
The man I had designated could not have been more than twenty. He had a fresh, handsome face, and when he smiled, as he often did, his smile lighted up his countenance as sunshine lights up a landscape. It was hard to associate him with crime or vice of any kind, and hence my question.
The detective laughed, and said, “You mean the Badger. He is one of the greatest scamps in all Paris, and one of the most desperate scoundrels. There is nothing in the world he would not do for money. If I were not here, and anybody were to offer him five francs, he would walk up to you, salute you politely, and blow your brains out, regarding it as a capital joke. The Badger is well educated, and is reputed to be the son of a prominent lawyer by an actress. He ran away from home, and turned thief on instinct. He is absolutely without fear and without conscience. That crime is natural to him is proved by his enjoyment of it. He has had marvellous good luck, for, though frequently arrested, he has never been punished, and the fact of his getting off again and again is ascribed by some to the influence and wealth of his father.”
The detective would have told more; but by this time the thieves, all of whom had drank liberally, began singing a coarse and profane song, in which morality, religion, and decency were burlesqued, and which, rendered by the harshvoices of the men and women, sounded, in that dreary cellar, like a chorus of infernal fiends.
GOING HOME.
Informing my guide that I had seen and heard enough, we went out of the stifling cellar, beyond the heavy oaken door, up the narrow stone staircase, reached our calèche, and as the fresh breeze welcomed us, and the clouds overhead broke away, revealing the stars, I seemed to have been transferred to another sphere, and I wondered that such dens of crime could exist and flourish under the beautiful exterior of Paris.