been accustomed to give these to the chiffonniers,
and stared incredulously when the
proposition was made to them, although they were
only too willing to entertain it.

Our dealer knew perfectly well what he was
about, he was aware that boys are fond of
wasting all the bread given to them which they
cannot eat, that they fling it at one another,
kick it about their playgrounds, and that
stained with ink, and covered with dirt, much
of it would lie soaking in a gutter or mouldering
on a rubbish-heap, and he thought if,
instead of undergoing these vicissitudes, all this
bread were collected with care by the servants,
a profitable market might be found for it.
With the view of leaving no room for
competition, he next made arrangements with the
scullions of both the large and small restaurants,
and knowing that the crust of bread was
to be found everywhere, at street corners, in
the kennels, and on the rubbish-heaps, he came
to an understanding with a majority of the
chiffonniers by offering them advantages which
they could not obtain elsewhere.

When all his arrangements were complete,
he established himself one morning at the
markets with sacksfull of pieces of bread, and
some empty baskets to serve as measures, and
with a notice in front of him announcing
"Crusts of bread for sale." He knew Paris
thoroughly, he knew that that portion of the
population which frequented the barriers had a
special liking for stewed rabbit, and that Paris
rabbits were reared on bread as well as
cabbages. Fowls, too, he knew were fattened on
bread crumbs, and other domestic animals fed
with them. Our dealer in second-hand bread
offered a basketful for six sous, which, being
much below the price of ammunition bread,
soon gained him the custom of all the little
fowl and rabbit breeders of the environs. At
the end of a month, on reckoning his profits,
he found his idea had proved an extremely
lucrative one. Every day for weeks following,
he concluded fresh bargains with the tables
d'hôte, the cafés, the cooks of grand houses,
and the sisters of religious communities, and
every month saw his profits steadily increase,
until, four months after his first appearance at
the markets, he had three horses and carts
constantly occupied. In the course of business
he was brought into contact with cooks,
butchers, and "charcutiers," all fond of keeping
dogs; and he gradually became initiated into
the secrets of their different professions, when
he learnt that all these men used considerable
quantities of bread crumbs for cutlets,
&c., and grated crusts for coating hams, and
that they bought the former at eight sous the
pint and a half. This determined him to
become a manufacturer of bread crumbs, and
to sell the full litre measure of a pint and
three quarters for as low as six sous, which
reduced price attracted nearly all the consumers
to him, and in less than six months he had to
procure additional horses and carts and to
engage a complete staff of workpeople.

To his business of second-hand baker and
manufacturer of bread crumbs, this real genius
ere long added the making of "croutons"—
those little lozenge-shaped crisp bits of baked
bread so largely eaten in soup, and which he
supplied to the grocers and small restaurants. All
his proceedings, too, were regulated on such
thorough economic principles, that not even the
blackened crusts were wasted, but, after being
reduced to a fine powder and passed through
silk sieves, were mixed with honey and spirits
of peppermint, and sold to the chemists and
perfumers for tooth paste, which, if not
particularly efficacious as a dentifrice, had the merit
of being innocuous.

By the time our second-hand baker had
made a moderate fortune, another purpose to
which refuse bread might be even more profitably
applied was discovered. This was for
the manufacture of common gingerbread, most
of which came from Rheims. An ingenious
individual, finding that crusts of bread were
being sold in the open market at such a price
as precluded the idea that they could have
ever emanated from a baker's shop, set to
work to see whether it was not possible to
reduce this bread into its pristine state for
ulterior purposes. After a few experiments, he
found that by submitting it to a certain
heat in an oven constructed expressly for
the purpose, it was possible so to harden it
without burning it that he could grind it up
again in a particular mill of his own invention,
and so reconvert it into flour, which answered
admirably for making common gingerbread.
These various processes patented, their inventor
became master of the cheap gingerbread trade
of Paris; for he could supply a sufficiently good
article at fifty per cent under all the other
manufacturers, and even at a less price than
ordinary bread was sold at.

Those who know the poorer quarters of
Paris, are aware that there are places where a
plate of meat can be obtained for a couple of sous,
and a plate of vegetables for another sou, and
that, lacking this amount of capital, it is possible
to procure a draft of bouillon from a spout
continually flowing, for just so long as you can
manage to hold your breath, for a single sou.
Those who prefer more solid food, and are withal
of a speculative turn, can, for the same small
coin, run what is called "the hazard of the fork"
—that is, a single plunge of this useful instrument
into a smoking caldron, with the privilege
of banqueting upon whatever you may fish out,
should you chance to fish out anything. If,
however, you prefer the bird in the hand, and
require to see your sou's worth before you part
with your money, you can patronise a bijoutier
(who is not a jeweller), and invest it in harlequins,
which have no relation whatever to pantomime.
For the harlequins of which one speaks
are simply scraps of every conceivable edible
substance, served up by Parisian cooks, that
chance to be left by dainty feeders on the sides
of their plates. Of all colours and shapes when
mixed together, they present a certain
resemblance to the parti-coloured garments of the
citizèn of Bergamo, and hence the name by