with green shutters, and numbered in gigantic
black figures, you reach a muddy unpaved alley,
at the further extremity of which, with one court
in front of and another behind—it the former
proudly called a garden—stands La Californie,
otherwise L'Estaminet des Pieds Humides,
because the ladies and gentlemen who go there
have a habit of standing at their meals instead
of sitting down to them. The principal refectory
is an immense room on the ground floor, to reach
which you must first pass through the kitchen,
where the wife of the proprietor, Madame Cadet,
sits enthroned. This kitchen reveals the nature
of the dainties served up to the Californians,
which you would probably not recognise if you
saw them after the process of cookery, though
only one form is adopted, that which is
popularly called fricot, and is applied indiscriminately
to beef, veal, mutton, and potatoes. It is the
quantity rather than the quality of the food
eaten at La Californie which most distinguishes
that place of popular resort. Here is an
account of its consumption: five thousand portions
of meat daily, for which one ox, several calves,
and half a dozen sheep are sacrificed; and eight
pièces (or barrels) of wine, of the kind called
"blue." In the course of the year one thousand
setiers, or twelve thousand bushels, of haricot
beans, and twice the quantity of potatoes,
together with fifty-five barrels of vinegar, and as
many of edible oil, not a drop of which is
expressed from olives. The price of a dinner at La
Californie—and the hungry guests eat their fill—
is only eight sous. The company consists, as may
be supposed, of the very poorest people, honest
or dishonest as the case may be, who fraternise
or not with each other, but who, at all events,
are perfectly indifferent to the morals of their
neighbours; beggars, thieves, workmen, soldiers,
chiffonniers, and market folks, are all indiscriminately
mixed together; every kind of costume
appears, from the filthiest rags to decent clothing
—every face wears its own strange expression,
and the conversation savours of the purest slang.
Although the majority of the guests are not,
perhaps, the most reputable, it is not an
uncommon thing to see an employer enter in
search of workmen, and go from table to table,
crying out in a stentorian voice, "Who wants
work?" Neither is it an uncommon thing to
find that nobody responds to this appeal: the
fricot and the vin bleu have attractions before
which labour pales. In Victor Hugo's
Misérables, one of the heroes is the gamin
Gavroche. Many such haunt La Californie, creeping
between the legs of the diners and watching
the moment when a plate is left with some
wretched morsel on it, which they seize upon
and empty into their blouses. When enough
of these nameless delicacies have been scraped
together, the "voyou" glides away, and reaching
the barrier sells his plunder to his hungrier
companions!

But there is something even lower than La
Californie, and that is the Cabarets des
Chiffonniers in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Médard: a
narrow, crooked street, dating from the sixteenth
century, in which all the houses are squalid and
all the inhabitants filthy. The Rue St. Médard
runs out of the Rue Mouffetard, which, beginning
near the Pantheon, leaves Paris by the
Barrier of Fontainebleau; it is the head-quarters
of that dirty race, the rag-gatherers, who make
increment of every kind of offal, and make
fortunes by it into the bargain. These cabarets
bear the nicknames of "yellow shops"—
boutiques de jaunier—on account of the yellow
poison sold there— new fiery spirit, at one sou
the glass. Here the biffins, as the chiffonniers
are also called, leave at the door the instruments
of their calling—their "sauvettes" or back-
baskets, and their "Number Seven" (7) or
crook, and sit round a table, eating immense
quantities of green salad which they correct
with yellow spirit, never touching any other
kind of liquid. These biffins have a jargon
of their own, distinct, in many particulars,
from the argot of Paris, and, in this language,
they discourse of their hideous discoveries
and the uses they put them to. These uses,
it need scarcely be said, are unsuspected by
the multitude—or many a fine lady, and
many a fine gentleman, would think twice
before they bought for genuine the articles
manufactured out of the rubbish collected by
the rag-gatherers.

There are few readers of the present generation
to whom Eugène Sue's Mysteries of Paris
are unknown. They will remember that the
story opens at the Cabaret du Lapin Blanc—
the "tapis franc" in the Rue aux Fèves,
between the Palais de Justice and Notre Dame.
As described by the novelist, the inmates of the
Lapin Blanc were purely imaginary. The cabaret
was not a den of thieves, neither were the
landlord and lady an ogre and his ogress; but the
place itself existed, and the animal from which
it took its name was visible to all eyes, in the
shape of a well stuffed white rabbit, with a red
ribbon round its neck, which ornamented one
end of the counter. Madame Mauras, the
proprietor's wife, though she professed not to
know the personages named in the novel as
frequenting her house, except "by reputation,"
had no objection to the popularity which the
novel conferred; and the walls of her saloon
were covered with pictures representing
different scenes in the Mysteries of Paris, with
coloured prints, indeed, of all kinds, wherever
there was room to put one up. Even some
busts were to be seen, notably that of Brutus
in a gardener's hat, and wearing spectacles,
through which, from the other end of the
counter, he seemed to be gravely contemplating
the white rabbit. For the rest, the Lapin Blanc
had in it nothing remarkable; but such as it
was, it will be looked for now in vain, for the
Rue aux Fèves itself, with many adjacent
streets, was demolished several months ago to
make a new square in front of the Palais de
Justice.

Besides the rag-gatherers, there is a class in
Paris—of a much higher grade—who have
cabarets exclusively their own. These are the