Their curious appearance led me to ask
how they were struck off, and, in order to
satisfy me, he led the way up a dark stair,
from which we entered upon the composing-rooms
of the premises. These, in appearance,
were like all other composing-rooms
that I had seen; the forms, and cases for
the type, were similar to those in London;
the men themselves had that worn and pale
look which characterises the class to which
they belong, and their pallor was not diminished
by their wearing of the long beard and
moustache. Their unbuttoned shirts and
bare breasts, the short clay pipe, reminded me
of the heroes of the barricades; indeed, I have
every reason to know that these very
compositors are generally foremost in revolutions;
and though they often print ministerial articles,
they are not sharers in the opinions
which they help to spread. The head printer
contracts for the printing, and chooses his
men where he can find them best. As a body,
these men were provident, I was told, and all
subscribed to a fund for their poor, their
orphans and widows; they form a sort of trade
union, and have very strict regulations.

I found a most remarkable want of
convenience in the working of the types. For
instance, there were no galleys, or longitudinal
trays, on which to place the type when it was
set up; but when a small quantity had been
put together in column on a broad copper
table, a string was passed round it to keep it
together. Nor was there any hand-press for
taking proofs; and here I found the explanation
of the extraordinary appearance of the
proofs I had seen below. For when I asked
to have one struck off, the head printer placed
a sheet of paper over the type, and with a
great brush beat it in, giving the proof a
sunken and embossed appearance, which it
seemed to me would render correction
exceedingly difficult. The French, it seems, care
not for improvement in this respect, any more
than the Chinese, whom the brush has served
in place of a printing-press for some three
thousand years.

This Journal has, as I have said, from
40,000 to 50,000 subscribers, in order to serve
whom it was necessary that the presses should
be at work as early as eleven o'clock at
night. But there is no difficulty in doing
this, where news not being the sine quâ non
of journalism, provincial and foreign intelligence
is given as fresh, which in England
would be considered much behind in time.
But even when commencing business at the
early hour above mentioned, I found that it
had been necessary for the paper to be
composed twice over, in order to save time; and
thus two printers' establishments were
required to bring out each number of the
journal in sufficient time for the country
circulation by early morning trains. The necessity
for this double composition is still existing
in most of the French newspaper offices, but had
been obviated here lately, by the erection of a
new printing-machine, which sufficed by the
speed of its working to print the given number
of copies necessary for satisfying the wants of
each day.

Having seen through the premises, and
witnessed all that was interesting in the
day-time, I was politely requested to return in
the evening, and see the remaining process of
printing the paper and getting it ready to send
out from the office.

Punctually at eleven o'clock I was in the
Rue du 24 Fevrier. Passing through the
offices which I had seen in the morning, I
was led by a sort of guide down some
passages dimly lighted with lamps. To the right
and to the left we turned, descending stone
steps into the bowels of the earth as it seemed
to me; the walls oozing with slimy damp in
some parts; dry and saltpetry in others. A
bundle of keys, which were jingling in my
guide's hand, made noises which reminded me
of the description of prisoners going down
into the Bastille or Tower. At another
moment a sound of voices in the distance,
reminded me of a scene of desperate coiners
in a cellar.

These sounds grew louder, as we soon
entered a vast stone cellar, in which rudely
dressed men, half-naked as to their breasts
and arms, were to be seen flitting to and
fro at the command of a superior; their
long beards and grimy faces, their short
pipes and dirty appearance, made them look
more like devils than men, and I bethought
me that here, at last, I had found that real
animal—the printer's devil. There were two
or three printing-presses in the room, only
one of which was going. Its rolling sound
was like thunder in the cave in which we
stood. As paper after paper flew out from
the sides of this creaking press, they were
carried to a long table and piled up in heaps.

Presently some of the stoutest men shouldered
a mass of these, and my conductor and
myself following them, we entered a passage
which led to another cellar, contiguous to that
in which the papers were printed. There,
sitting round a number of tables, were several
young women. These women, seized upon a
portion of the papers brought in, and with
an amazing rapidity folded them into a small
compass. In a few minutes all the papers I
had seen printed were folded and numbered
off by dozens. Then comes another operation:
a man came round and deposited before
each woman a bundle of little paper slips,
which I found to be the addresses of the
subscribers. The women placed the labels and
the paste on one side, and commenced
operations. A bundle of papers, folded, was
placed before each; the forefinger, dipped in
the paste, immediately touched the paper and
the label simultaneously, and the
'Constitutionnel' flew out with a speed perfectly
astonishing from the hands of these women,
ready to be distributed in town or country.
They were then finishing the labelling of the