whereabouts I know not—his bed is a mystery.
The next pen is occupied by two carpenters,
seldom at home. When they come home, all
of us know it; for they are extremely musical.
In the third pen live three more tailors,
through whose territory I must pass to my
own cabinet. But how snug that is!
Although only eight feet by ten, it has two
corner windows; and, if there is little furniture
and but a scanty bed, there is a looking-
glass fit for a baron, and some remains of
violet-coloured hangings and long muslin
curtains; either white or brown, I am not
sure. I and the German pay for this
apartment fifteen shillings monthly.

There is a kind of lodgers worth especial
mention. The men working in the yards
of masons, carpenters, and others—masons
especially—frequently come from the
provinces. They are not part of the fixed
population; but are men who have left their wives
and families to come up to the town and earn
a sum of money. For this they work most
energetically, living in the most abstemious
manner, in order that they may not break into
their hoard. They occupy furnished lodgings,
flocking very much together. Thus the masons
from the departments of la Creuse and la
Haute Vienne occupy houses let out in
furnished rooms exclusively to themselves in the
quarters of the Hotel de Ville, the Arsenal,
Saint Marcel, and in other parts of Paris.
The rigid parsimony of these men is
disappointed terribly when any crisis happens.
They are forced to eat their savings, to turn
their clothing and their tools into food, and,
by the revolution of eighteen hundred and
forty-eight, were reduced to such great
destitution, that in some of the houses occupied
by them one dress was all that remained to
all the lodgers. They wore it in turn, one
going out in it to seek for work while all the
rest remained at home in bed. The poor
fellows thanked the want of exercise for
helping them to want of appetite—the only
kind of want that poverty desires.

These men, however, working in the great
yards, eating their meals near them in an
irregular and restless way, form clubs and
associations which lead not seldom to strikes
—blunders which we call placing ourselves en
Grève. They take the name en Grève from
the place in which one class of builders'
workmen assemble when waiting to be hired.
Various places are chosen by sundry workmen
and workwomen for this practice of
waiting to be hired. Laundresses, for example,
are to be found near the church of our Lady
of Loretto, where they endure, and too often
enjoy, coarse words from passers-by.

Except in the case of the masons and
labourers from the departments, it is to be
regarded as no good sign when a workman
makes a residence of furnished lodgings. The
orderly workman marries, and acquires the
property of furniture. The mason from the
departments lives cheaply, and saves, to go
home with money to his family, and acquire
in his own village the property of land. The
workman bound to Paris, who dwells only in
furnished lodgings, and has bought no furniture,
has rarely saved and has rarely made
an honest marriage. In most cases he is a
lover of pleasure, frequents the theatre and
the wine shop. From wine he runs on to the
stronger stimulus of brandy, but these leave
to him some gleams of his national vivacity.
The most degraded does not get so lumpish
as the English workman, whose brains have
become sodden in the public-houses by long
trains of pots of beer. By far the largest
portion of the Paris workmen possess furniture;
only twenty-one in a hundred—and
that includes, of course, the mobile
population, the masons, &c. —live in furnished
lodgings.

For clothing, we spend according to our
means from four to fourteen pounds a year on
that. Half of us have no coat in addition to
the blouse. Before the crisis of eighteen
hundred and forty-eight, one sixth of us had
money in savings' banks, and one man in
every two was a member of some benefit
society. The benefit societies were numerous,
each generally containing some two or
three hundred members; but even our singing
clubs are now suppressed, and we must not
meet even to transact the business of a benefit
society without giving notice of our design
to the police, and receiving into our party at
least two of its agents as lookers-on. The
result has been the decay of all such societies,
and the extinction of most of them. Where
they remain, the average monthly subscription
is fifteen-pence, which ensures the payment
of twenty-pence a day during sickness,
with gratuitous advice and medicine from
the doctor. The funds of such societies
are lodged either in savings' banks, or in
the Mont de Piété; which, though properly
a pawnbroking establishment, has also its
uses as a bank. The imperial fist presses
everywhere down upon us. It has forced
us out of sick clubs; because we sometimes
talked in them about the state of the nation:
it would build us huge barracks to live
in, so that we may be had continually
under watch and ward; and it has lately
thrust in upon us a president of its own
at the head of our Conseil de Prud'hommes,
the only tribunal we possess for the
adjustment of our internal trade disputes.

Of our pleasures on a Sunday afternoon
the world has heard. We devote that to
our families, if we have any; Monday, too
often, to our friends. There are on
Sundays our gymnastic fêtes at open air balls
beyond the barriers, and our dancing
saloons in the city; the Prado, the Bal
Montesquieu, and the Dogs' Ball. There are our
pleasant country rambles, and our pleasant
little dinners in the fields. There are
our games at pool, and dominoes, and
piquet; our pipes with dexterously blackened