which they have come to be known. The
dealers in these delicacies have contracts with
the scullions employed at the different ministries
and embassies, and in all the more wealthy
private households and the chief hotels, but
more particularly with those engaged at the
great restaurants—men who spend the best
part of their lives in a species of Turkish bath
at a temperature of from one hundred and forty
to one hundred and eighty degrees, for a salary
of five-and-twenty francs a month, on condition
that all the scraps on the plates they have to
wash up are their perquisites, said scraps being
usually worth at least ten times the amount of
their salary. Three francs the basketful is the
average price they obtain for the scrapings of
the platters that pass through their hands, and
all of which, from truffled turkey to trotters,
from ortolans to haricots, is thrown pell-mell
into a common receptacle. Every morning the
dealer or his agent, dragging behind him a
closed cart, furnished with ventilators, visits
all the establishments with which there is
a contract, and basketful after basketful is
flung into the vehicle, which, later in the day,
deposits its contents at a particular pavilion of
the Halles Centrales, set apart for the sale of
cooked meats. Here each dealer sorts his
nameless heap, where hors d'Å“uvres are mixed
with the roasts, and vegetables with entremets,
and where fishes' heads, scraps of cutlets,
fricandeaus, and filets, half-picked drumsticks,
and portions of ragouts and mayonaises are
intimately blended with fragments of pastry,
salads, macaroni, vegetables, cheese, and fruits;
the whole being, moreover, impregnated with
at least twenty different sauces. All that is
recognisable in this conglomeration is carefully
put on one side, cleaned, trimmed, and placed
on plates. Out of regard for the stomachs of
their customers, the bijoutiers perform this
delicate operation of sorting in private, and it
is only when all is finished, the discordant
pieces duly assimilated, and the harlequins
arranged in little piles, with the titbits—or
jewels, as they are termed—temptingly
displayed in front, that the public are invited to
inspect and purchase.

Many poor people and working men engaged
in the neighbourhood of the markets, prefer
these high-seasoned delicacies to a plainer style
of living, and the consequence is that by
one o'clock in the day every dealer in harlequins
is nearly certain to be cleared out. All
that is rejected during the sorting is sold as
food for pet dogs, for whose special benefit
certain bijoutiers convert these dregs into a
succulent sort of paste, which is much sought
after by fussy old ladies, the plethoric habit of
whose Italian greyhounds evince the high kind
of living in which they are indulged. The
bones, which have been preserved with care,
are sold to the manufacturers of soup cakes,
and, after the gelatine has been extracted from
them, they are disposed of to the manufacturers
of animal black. That the trade in harlequins
is a good one, is evident from the fact that
there are numerous retired bijoutiers in Paris,
who have amassed incomes of from ten to
twelve thousand francs a year after a few years'
successful trade.

If the calling of bijoutier is a profitable one,
that of "zesteuse" would appear to be hardly
less so, as the reader will presently see. Some
years ago, a certain Madame Vanard was left a
widow at the interesting age of eighteen. Her
husband, a practical chemist, who had
established a little distillery at which he extracted
essences for perfumers and pastrycooks, killed
himself through overwork. During the few
happy months he and his young bride passed
together, the latter, while watching her husband
at his employment, had learnt some of the
rudiments of chemical science, and was able to
replace him at his alembics at such times as he
was obliged to be absent. When he died,
desiring to carry on his business, and remembering
his having one day remarked to her that an
intelligent man might make his fortune out of
the orange and lemon peel thrown away in
Paris, she determined to see if she could not
put the suggestion he had shadowed forth into
practice.

With this view she went one day, basket on
arm, into the Rue Montorgeuil, where the oyster
market was then held, and where there were
numerous restaurants, at which these bivalves
were the staple article of consumption, and
where—as the Parisian, even to the working
man, invariably eats lemon juice with his
oysters—the remains of squeezed lemons
naturally abounded. On the hundreds of
rubbish heaps, where one chiffonnier after another
had already reaped a harvest, she prepared to
seek hers. The garçons of the neighbouring
restaurants and cafés, observing a young and
pretty woman come regularly every morning to
search where so many others had searched
before, inquired of her what she was in quest of,
and, on being told, promised to put the precious
peel on one side for her.

Her next course was to find the people who
swept out the audience portion of the Paris
theatres, and to prevail on them, for a small
consideration, to save for her the orange peel
with which the floors were strewn. She then
engaged washers and sorters, whom she set to
work in a large room, round which horizontal
wicker hurdles, piled up with scraps of orange
and lemon peel, were arranged, reaching from
the floor almost to the ceiling. In the centre
of the apartment was a long table, at which a
score or more of laughing, chattering girls
would be busily engaged in "zesting"—that is,
in removing the extreme outside portion of the
peel, with which men and boys proceeded to fill
bags and boxes. After being weighed and done
up in packets, this peel was dispersed, not only
all over Paris again, but throughout France,
and even abroad, where it was transformed into
Dutch curaçoa, essence and syrup of lemon,
orangeade, lemonade, &c. Such is the business
which made the fortune of a charming woman,
and which, spite of its having spread of late
years into a multiplicity of hands, is still a
profitable calling.