Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 046.djvu/31

1839.] Notes of a Traveller. No. II. 23 his shop window; he would fain clothe you in equally becoming raiment with his own; do but glance towards his window as you pass, and swifter than spider darts along his line on an implicated fly, he is at your side! "Voyez, Monsieur!" "Entrez, Monsieur!" Or, are you hungry and not naked? Behold the pastry booth, with plates of cold Yorkshire pudding, rancid "babas," and gingerbread piqué with almonds, and all that can be made of equivocal butter, mildewed flour, and brown sugar. Here, too, are stay and corset-makers, who pique your curiosity or challenge your anatomical knowledge, in the display of taille of the most captivating dimensions, and indiscreetly show the very public how such things maybe brought about by padding, and wadding, and cushions, and steel springs.

But enough! The Boulevard St Denys, as every one knows, is a compendium of Paris itself, and the St Denys coach, by which we mean to go, is ready to start, and warns us to mount in a hurry, lest we lose the quickly-occupied place to every suburban station: on we go, and on we go—the street getting shabbier at every step through the long long fauxbourg (all fauxbourgs are long, all fauxbourgs are bad, and this the longest and the worst), the shop-windows exhibit less and less costly merchandize; the plate-glass windows of the smart shawl-shops disappear; the frescoed ceiling and the gilt cornice of the coffee-house are no more. The bon-bons shops, which in Paris more than rival the very jewellers in display, have no business here—orange, and pink, and sapphire-coloured sugar-plums, are for other regions. We behold no longer the pyramid of caramel, the pralined petals of the orange, the violet, or the rose, the chrysolite that melts in your mouth, or the pretty girls who serve you. Sages femmes there still are and must be, but not like our Boulevard ones; the very signs are all in this quarter by inferior artists, and in place of the chemist's shop with all its glories, dried plants and tureens full of leeches indicate the humbler herboriste.

We are at the Barrière, and some day we will stop for five minutes to look at the proceedings of the officers of the Octroi, whose business it is, in behalf of the good Ville de Paris, to exact the municipal tax, so named, on all alimentary substances; and who accordingly run their long steel spits through unknown packages, and announced as dry goods—a skin of wine or spirits would stand a bad chance with this practical commentary on the Impulerat ferro Argolicas fœdare latebras. The buzzing hornets of this troublesome excise left to their occupations, we find before us a long amphibious kind of street, of which every second house is destined for cheap repast and economical wine-bibbing, where countless sign-boards attest how surely the ruling inclination of the many is to reconcile gastronomy with the frugal administration of finance; one tells us of its hundred couverts, and its weekly balls; another is prepared for marriage feasts, or any other rejoicings to be got up on short notice (noces et festins). Here a swan with a cross between his neck and foot is at once the signe and cygne de la croix, and by the singularity of the device arrests the customer. There the "three barbels," true to their ensign, exhibit the dish of ready-fried flounder or gudgeon. Further on, the over-tempted Saint, amidst naked syrens and ruby wine-cups, seems by his gesture not so much intended to indicate the necessity of self-control, as the pleasure of yielding to the temptation of the Burgundy, &c., within—Burgundy beyond the barrier and the Octroi! Peep through those dirty panes and you shall see a voiturier's larder,—sheeps' trotters, crapaudine pigeons, stale cold meat, faded sallad, basins filled with stewed pears and plums, or the rolled cylinder of raw beef waiting orders, or the half of a yellow goose, such as one hopes Cyrus did not send his hungry friends; in short, hundreds of places are here where nature may be satisfied for a few