Another widow, older and not so pretty, or
so elegant, or so intelligent, and, consequently,
not by any means so interesting as Madame
Vanard, made a fortune for herself out of what
everybody else looked upon as rubbish. She
was concierge at a house in the Rue du Temple,
occupied almost exclusively by manufacturing
goldsmiths, and, one very severe winter, was
possessed with the economical idea of burning,
in an old caldron that served her for a stove, all
the sweepings of the house. The plan answered
remarkably well, for she found what she had
hitherto regarded as so much mere dust became,
when mixed with turf and coal, an excellent
combustible. Warmer weather having set in,
the old lady went about the usual spring cleaning
up of her place, and, on clearing out the old
caldron, was surprised to see some hard
glittering substance soldered, as it were, to the
bottom of the utensil. On closer examination
it proved to be gold; the old lady had
unwittingly discovered the philosopher's stone, which
so many have sought in vain. Keeping her
secret so far as she was able, she proceeded to
rent on lease the sweeping of the staircases in
all the neighbouring houses occupied by gold-
smiths—paying to do that which people
ordinarily pay to have done. With the profits
resulting from this speculation she bought several
large plots of ground in the outskirts of Paris,
on which she built theatrical-looking Swiss
villages, and sold her châlets one by one to small
tradesmen of bucolic tastes, who spend their
Sundays there, fancying the adjacent
Montmartre and the more distant Mont Valerien to
be peaks of some neighbouring Alpine chain.

One can understand a fortune being made out
of an imperishable substance like gold, but can
hardly conceive an independence being realised
out of faded flowers, and yet this was done by
an intelligent Parisian, who, at his wit's end
for the means to live, thus reasoned to himself
one day: Those expensive bouquets, of which
one sees such an abundance every morning at
the "Marché aux fleurs," must be constantly
flung aside by the beauties to whom they have
been presented, a long while before the flowers
are really dead, and as a matter of course find
their way to the rubbish heaps before their
proper time. Early in the morning in the
fashionable quarters of Paris these heaps are
strewn with flowers still blooming. "Now,"
said our intelligent Parisian to himself, "if I
were to go or send round early and pick up all
these flowers, and could only succeed in finding
out a way of reviving them, if merely for a
short time, I might make a little fortune." He
was not long in finding out all he wanted,
whereupon he hired a small isolated house near
the Barrière Montparnasse, and engaged a
number of poor people to collect the flowers
from off the rubbish heaps before the chiffonniers
went their rounds and soiled them by
turning all the refuse over; the flowers once in
his house, this is how he set to work.

A number of women undid the different
bouquets, sorted the flowers, cut off the ends of
all the stalks, which they afterwards dipped into
water almost boiling, thereby causing the sap to
mount into the flowers, and rendering them as
brilliant as though they were gathered that
morning. The flowers were then mounted upon
rush stems, arranged in bouquets and
surrounded with fresh green leaves, and all was
done. To get rid of the bouquets a band of
little girls were hired, who cleanly and tidily
dressed, and with small baskets upon their
arms containing the day's stock, and bunches
of flowers in their hands, pestered the passers-
by along the boulevards, who to get rid of
their importunities generally made purchases.
So well organised was the entire affair, that
upwards of a thousand pounds a year was realised
by our intelligent Parisian.

Much in the same way as it occurred to this
individual that it might be practicable to
utilise the castaway bouquets of Parisian belles,
others were struck with the possibility of turning
to account the ends of cigars already
smoked. Still the calling, which is pursued in
Paris to a great extent, is not a particularly
profitable one, as any poor devil can scour the
boulevards and the outsides of the more
frequented cafés, and pick up a share of the cigar
ends that fall from the lips of more than a
hundred thousand smokers. After chopping these
ends up small the collector can make up little
packets of tobacco, and sell to a working man
four times as much tobacco for a sou as he could
purchase at a tobacconist's for the same money.
The ends of the superior cigars he will sell to
the cigarette manufacturers for a couple of
francs and upwards per pound. Hundreds of
men out of work pursue this calling in Paris,
where nearly half a million of cigars are smoked
every day, and the majority of them in the
open air.

The chiffonnier is too well known to need
description here; besides, to do him justice would
require a small volume. Still there is one branch
of the profession of the "chiffe" very little
known, and on which a few words may be said.
This is the "trieur," or sorter, who is charged
with classifying the contents of all the baskets
of the working chiffonniers, which the "ogres,"
who carry on "chiffonnerie" on a grand scale,
purchase for a stated price. As soon as these
various baskets are emptied into the sorting
shed, the "trieurs," male and female, set to
work to separate this mass of filth and rubbish,
to winnow, in fact, the grain from the chaff.
Thus all the white rags are put on one side to
be sold to the paper-makers, all the coloured
and silk ones to the "unravellers," the paper
to the cardboard manufacturers, the bones,
according to their size, to the ivory turners, the
button-makers, or the refiners, the old iron,
copper, zinc, and lead to the blacksmiths and
founders, the old leather to the furbishers up
of old boots and shoes, the hair to the
coiffeurs, the wool to the mattress-makers, and all
fatty substances to the soap and candle
manufacturers. These "trieurs" ordinarily work
twelve hours a-day in a pestiferous atmosphere,
which is at times so charged with noxious
exhalations as to put out the very lamps they use.