Page:The illustrators of Montmartre.pdf/19



eccentric quarters of Paris — that is to say, on that soiled fringe of nondescript outlying districts of the Ville Lumiére, which is separated from the city proper by the circlet of shabby-genteel exterior boulevards. Many of these suburbs were at one time peaceful, outlying villages; but they have now been swallowed, and more or less thoroughly digested, by the metropolis. Thus it comes that many of them consist of a queer mixture of humble rustic abodes jostling against towering blocks of tenement buildings, or busy factories for ever being pressed outwards by the expanding city.

No less incongruous than these streets are their inhabitants, — chiefly composed of armies upon armies of tatling workers, while there is nevertheless an effervescing sediment or substratum of those who live by violence and crime. The less successful of these who trade on the weaknesses and follies of a vicious city are forced by circumstances to live in these cheaper suburbs, just as are the poorest of the honest classes; and this is so despite the fact that throughout Paris the upper stories of all flats are occupied by the lower, or at any rate the poorer, classes.

Curiosity, and a search for novel experiences wherewith to whet their jaded appetites, brought numbers of roysterers of a higher social grade to the places of amusement affected by this poverty-stricken and criminal population. These same humble places of amusement, more particularly round and about