Part 11

During the siege of Paris the people universally fell into poverty. On its termination a certain landlord, unable to get his rents, determined to eject all the defaulters. He sent an order to his agent to turn them out and sell their goods. One was a widow with two children. Her husband had died of a cold caught in the trenches. In her grief the poor woman had vowed she would never be married again, and as a sort of testimony of the truth of her intention she had had their walnut bedstead sawn in half. When the time came for the expulsion the proprietor arrived, and seeing the best piece of furniture spoiled, upbraided her with ruining his goods.

She found hospitality elsewhere, but the loss of the old home and the household gods turned her brain. The insurrection of the Commune broke out. She was one of the first to rush to the scene and to join the insurgents. She and her children were seen wherever there was peril. She mounted the barricade, and planted the flag of the Commune in the teeth of the besiegers. In one of the last days of the defence her eldest son was separated from her in the struggle, and the youngest was killed at her feet. Frantic, she seized the body of the child, and springing up a barricade, hurled it upon the bayonets of the soldiers, then tearing open her dress she cried wildly, “Kill me! kill me!” She fell over the stones, but was not dead. “Finish her!” cried the young officer in charge.

A workman’s rooms are generally poorly furnished, but clean; the custom being to spend a disproportionate amount of income on food and clothing.

Living does not seem so costly in Paris as in London, yet it is generally thought dear. Nevertheless the workman can not be said to fare badly.

There are various modes and hours of taking meals in Paris, depending chiefly on the nationality; for it must never be forgotten that Paris is a cosmopolitan city, and contains large numbers of workmen of German, Belgian, and Italian origin.

The French mode is for the workman to leave home fasting, taking his first two meals at a restaurant or cabaret near the place where he is working. The second meal is eaten about ten or eleven o’clock in the morning, and consists of a plate of meat and vegetables and half a bottle of wine. Any one walking about Paris at this hour of the day must have observed workmen seated alone or in groups at the little tables outside the restaurants, eating their breakfast.

The variety offered and the prices may be judged from the following bill of fare, exposed in a street peculiarly frequented by workmen:

cents. Radishes, sardines, butter 3 Soup 3 Common wine 7 Beef 6 Mutton stew 7 Leg of mutton 8 Stewed rabbit 12 Chops 8 Goose and veal 12 Potato stew 3 Salads and fruits 3 Cheese and sweetmeats 3 Coffee 4

The workman’s wife has, with her children, an early meal of milked coffee or soup, the children taking with them to school sandwiches of bread and cheese, or something from the previous day’s dinner. The mother takes a similar breakfast in the middle of the day, the whole family looking forward to the third meal, indiscriminately called dinner or supper, as the principal one of the day. This consists of soup, meat, vegetables or salad, cheese or prunes, and fresh fruit according to the season.

Two or three times a week the kettle is put on, and rich soup and boiled beef obtained. Thin soup is made from the water in which the vegetables have been boiled, or with onions, of which the Paris workman is fond. Wine is generally drunk at supper, but when it is very dear a home-made wine is obtained from raisins, or the wife and children drink water in which liquorice root has been steeped.

Nearly every district in Paris has excellent markets, at which all kinds of meat and poultry, vegetables and dairy produce, can be bought at reasonable prices. There are special days in which it is known certain articles will be fresh and abundant.

In addition to the ordinary butchers’ shops, which in Paris are always peculiarly clean and well arranged, there are special shops for the sale of the flesh of horses, asses, and mules. These shops are called horseflesh shops. There is nothing in the least revolting in their appearance, the joints looking like ordinary meat, only a little darker. It strikes the eye at first as strange to see, “Ass, best quality,” but it is a matter of habit.

The economical wife knows all the various pieces of meat which are nourishing, some of which are little heard of in England, such as beef’s stomach, veal’s mouth, sheep’s foot.

Vegetables are always plentiful in Paris, owing to the quantity of market-garden land round the city, and for the same reason there is a constant supply of salads all the year round, but then the Parisians will make a salad of the leaves of the lamb’s lettuce and the dandelion.

Another help in the domestic economy of the workman’s home is the existence of the co-operative stores for the sale of provisions. In 1870 there were three or four hundred such societies in Paris.

The clothing and linen in a workman’s home are said to equal in value his furniture. His own clothing costs him about $24 a year; washing and mending raising the cost by $12; the clothing of his wife and two children would be about $44 more.

The workman’s wife is extremely industrious, rising early and always assiduously engaged in domestic duties, or in some work by which she adds to the income.

Many workmen with small families are able to save sufficient to set their wives up in business as washerwomen, or in a fruit or newspaper stall. Often she undertakes the duties of a housekeeper, _i. e._, acting as general servant for the first few hours of the day in some family of the middle class. When she thus works she has to send her children to the crib or to the asylum; but this is not frequent, as the families of workmen in Paris are usually very small.

Those who have the largest are generally of German origin, coming from Alsace, Belgium, and countries bordering on the Rhine. That very large families sometimes are found among workmen in Paris is proved by one case where a day laborer, a native of the department of the Haut-Rhin, received a prize of $600 for bringing up a family of fifteen children respectably on a wage of fifty cents a day. In the end he was assisted by his son, who was able to earn as a skilled workman more than his father.

As a rule the workman leaves the management of the children and the spending of the money entirely to his wife. He gives her all the wages on pay-day, and she doles out to him every morning the sum necessary for his meals.

Sometimes she finds a great deficit when this time comes. Then she weeps and upbraids him, while he, confessing his fault, says reproachfully of himself, “One must not deceive when one has five or six children.”

It does not appear to be easy to outwit a French woman. Occasionally a drinking husband will try to hide a piece of money in some out of the way place, as, for instance, the peak of his hat. But his wife ransacks his clothes while he is asleep and finds the missing coin. This position of affairs being well known, the workman who will not be entrapped into drinking, or who, being one of a social gathering, insists on going home early, is chaffed as a man who buttons up his coat with pins.

It is certainly a fact that feminine influence is very powerful in Paris, and that what the mother is the home becomes. Thus while Paris workmen almost universally absent themselves from the churches, and throw all their influence politically against the priests, their children go in crowds to make their first communion, and to this end are placed under the priests for religious instruction.

To see the street in front of a Paris church on Whit Sunday, no one would believe religion was a matter not only of indifference, but of contempt, to the Paris workman. The road seen from a balcony is like an immense field of snow-drops. Hundreds of white-robed children float about among crowds of smiling parents and friends. And yet there is hardly anything in it beyond a domestic rite, something which it is respectable to go through at a certain age.

“I will sell my clothes, but my child shall not be different from others,” says a mother, who, no more than her husband, considers the spiritual aspect of the ceremony.

The domestic affections of the workman, where he has not been demoralized by licentiousness or vice, are strong, and his sense of duty to his relatives unusual. Thus it would seem not at all uncommon for a workman to support his wife’s mother, even when she lives far away. A workman who had done this for some time fell, through the state of public affairs, into such distress as to be obliged to earn his bread by selling journals in the street. After a time he recovered his position; but all through his period of poverty, the mother-in-law was allowed to believe that no change had taken place in his circumstances. Another workman, who had originally been in business as a butcher, partly ruined himself by undertaking the charge of his wife’s family. However, he never forsook the mother-in-law, but when he had a numerous family and only the small and precarious wages of a day laborer, she remained as much part of his family as the children.

The workman is careful of his children. He will fetch his daughter, apprenticed to dressmaking, from her work in the evening, and likes to have his son follow the same business as himself. He respects his own art, and has no desire to see his boy made into a clerk. If his wife is foolish enough to express such a wish he rates her soundly. “Does she want to make a skip-kennel (errand boy) of him because one gets dirty in factory work?”

“Thou knowest,” he concludes, “I always consider what thou sayest, but candidly, thou art unreasonable—wouldst thou then have him die of hunger when he is grown up? To slave at a desk is a miserable business; one ought to have a manual trade, with that a man always has his living at his fingers’ ends. Why! thou hast never said I was too dirty for thee; ah! I should like to see him a clerk. And to think that there are people who pretend that the woman has as much judgment as the man. Yes, yes, thou art a very good sort of a woman, but at bottom thou knowest nothing. Henri shall be a mechanic; the devil may burn me if ever he becomes a scribbling puppet.”—_Good Words._

A PROPHECY.

By the REV. BENJAMIN COPELAND.

O, happy, happy, happy boy! Let me tell you all your joy; Let me whisper in your ear All the secret of the seer. Let me tell your fortune fair To the wide and wandering air, To the gentle, genial air; Let me share my rapture rare With the social, songful air; Whatsoe’er the world may say, You shall have the right of way. You shall laugh, and you shall play, And, in merry roundelay, Dance with jolly faun and fay. You shall have the wealth of May For your dowry every day. Nature, from her frailest spar, To her oldest, utmost star, All her miracles shall bring For your blissful wondering; You shall be her priest and king. Knowing what was never known, Reaping what was never sown, You shall feel the world your own, On your universal throne. And, in holy place apart, (Blessed are the pure in heart!) In a halo of delight, Jubilant with glorious might, You shall walk with God in white. This is all was shown to me Of the child’s futurity. What the youth and man will be, Sealéd is in mystery. Scarcely can his angel see, Face to face with deity, Farther into certainty. _God exceed the prophecy!_ God be better to the boy Than the poet’s dream of joy.

TALES FROM SHAKSPERE.

By CHARLES LAMB.

THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.

There lived in the city of Verona two young gentlemen, whose names were Valentine and Protheus, between whom a firm and uninterrupted friendship had long subsisted. They pursued their studies together, and their hours of leisure were always passed in each other’s company, except when Protheus visited a lady he was in love with; and these visits, and this passion of Protheus for the fair Julia, were the only topics on which these two friends disagreed: for Valentine, not being himself a lover, was sometimes a little weary of hearing his friend forever talking of his Julia, and then he would laugh at Protheus, and in pleasant terms ridicule the passion of love, and declare that no such idle fancies should ever enter his head, greatly preferring (as he said) the free and happy life he lead, to the anxious hopes and fears of the lover Protheus.

One morning Valentine came to Protheus, to tell him that they must for a time be separated, for that he was going to Milan. Protheus, unwilling to part with his friend, used many arguments to prevail upon Valentine not to leave him; but Valentine said, “Cease to persuade me, my loving Protheus, I will not, like a sluggard, wear out my youth in idleness at home. Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits. If your affection were not chained to the sweet glances of your honored Julia, I would entreat you to accompany me, to see the wonders of the world abroad; but since you are a lover, love on still, and may your love be prosperous!” They parted with mutual expressions of unalterable friendship. “Sweet Valentine, adieu!” said Protheus; “think on me, when you see some rare object worthy of notice in your travels, and wish me partaker of your happiness.”

Valentine began his journey that same day towards Milan; and when his friend had left him, Protheus sat down to write a letter to Julia, which he gave to her maid Lucetta to deliver to her mistress. Julia loved Protheus as well as he did her, but she was a lady of a noble spirit, and she thought it did not become her maiden dignity too easily to be won; therefore she affected to be insensible of his passion, and gave him much uneasiness in the prosecution of his suit. And when Lucetta offered the letter to Julia, she would not receive it, and chid her maid for taking letters from Protheus, and ordered her to leave the room. But she so much wished to see what was written in the letter, that she soon called in her maid again, and when Lucetta returned, she said, “What o’clock is it?” Lucetta, who knew her mistress more desired to see the letter than to know the time of day, without answering her question, again offered the rejected letter. Julia, angry that her maid should thus take the liberty of seeming to know what she really wanted, tore the letter in pieces, and threw it on the floor, ordering her maid once more out of the room. As Lucetta was retiring, she stopped to pick up the fragments of the torn letter; but Julia, who meant not so to part with them, said, in pretended anger, “Go, get you gone, and let the papers lie; you would be fingering them to anger me.”

Julia then began to piece together as well as she could the torn fragments. She first made out these words, “Love-wounded Protheus;” and lamenting over these and such-like loving words, which she made out though they were all torn asunder, or she said, wounded (the expression “Love-wounded Protheus,” giving her that idea), she talked to these kind words, telling them she would lodge them in her bosom as in a bed, till their wounds were healed, and that she would kiss each several piece, to make amends. In this manner she went on talking with a pretty lady-like childishness, till finding herself unable to make out the whole, and vexed at her own ingratitude in destroying such sweet and loving words, as she called them, she wrote a much kinder letter to Protheus than she had ever done before.

Protheus was greatly delighted at receiving this favorable answer to his letter; and while he was reading it, he exclaimed, “Sweet love, sweet lines, sweet life!” In the midst of his raptures he was interrupted by his father. “How now!” said the old gentleman, “what letter are you reading there?” “My lord,” replied Protheus, “it is a letter from my friend Valentine, at Milan.” “Lend me the letter,” said his father; “let me see what news.” “There are no news, my lord,” said Protheus, greatly alarmed, “but that he writes how well beloved he is of the Duke of Milan, who daily graces him with favors; and how he wishes me with him, the partner of his fortune.” “And how stand you affected to his wish?” asked the father. “As one relying on your lordship’s will, and not depending on his friendly wish,” said Protheus.

Now it had happened that Protheus’s father had just been talking with a friend on this very subject: his friend had said, he wondered his lordship suffered his son to spend his youth at home, whilst most men were sending their sons to seek preferment abroad; “some,” said he, “to the wars, to try their fortunes there, and some to discover islands far away, and some to study in foreign universities; and there is his companion Valentine, he is gone to the Duke of Milan’s court. Your son is fit for any of these things, and it will be a great disadvantage to him in his riper age, not to have traveled in his youth.”

Protheus’s father thought the advice of his friend was very good, and upon Protheus telling him that Valentine “wished him with him, the partner of his fortune,” he at once determined to send his son to Milan; and without giving Protheus any reason for this sudden resolution, it being the usual habit of this positive old gentleman to command his son, not reason with him, he said, “My will is the same as Valentine’s wish:” and seeing his son look astonished, he added, “Look not amazed, that I so suddenly resolve you shall spend some time in the Duke of Milan’s court; for what I will I will, and there is an end. To-morrow be in readiness to go. Make no excuses, for I am peremptory.” Protheus knew it was of no use to make objections to his father, who never suffered him to dispute his will; and he blamed himself for telling his father an untruth about Julia’s letter, which had brought upon him the sad necessity of leaving her.

Now that Julia found she was going to lose Protheus for so long a time, she no longer pretended indifference; and they bade each other a mournful farewell with many vows of love and constancy. Protheus and Julia exchanged rings, which they both promised to keep forever in remembrance of each other; and thus, taking a sorrowful leave, Protheus set out on his journey to Milan, the abode of his friend Valentine.

Valentine was in reality what Protheus had feigned to his father, in high favor with the duke of Milan; and another event had happened to him, of which Protheus did not even dream, for Valentine had given up the freedom of which he used so much to boast, and was become as passionate a lover as Protheus. She who had wrought this wondrous change in Valentine, was the lady Silvia, daughter of the duke of Milan, and she also loved him; but they concealed their love from the duke, because although he showed much kindness to Valentine, and invited him every day to his palace, yet he designed to marry his daughter to a young courtier whose name was Thurio. Silvia despised this Thurio, for he had none of the fine sense and excellent qualities of Valentine.

These two rivals, Thurio and Valentine, were one day on a visit to Silvia, and Valentine was entertaining Silvia with turning everything Thurio said into ridicule, when the duke himself entered the room, and told Valentine the welcome news of his friend Protheus’s arrival. Valentine said, “If I had wished a thing, it would have been to have seen him here!” and then he highly praised Protheus to the duke, saying, “My lord, though I have been a truant of my time, yet hath my friend made use and fair advantage of his days, and is complete in person and in mind, in all good grace to grace a gentleman.” “Welcome him then according to his worth,” said the duke; “Silvia, I speak to you, and you, sir Thurio; for Valentine, I need not bid him do so.” They were here interrupted by the entrance of Protheus, and Valentine introduced him to Silvia, saying, “Sweet lady, entertain him to be my fellow servant to your ladyship.”

When Valentine and Protheus had ended their visit, and were alone together, Valentine said, “Now tell me how all does from whence you came? How does your lady, and how thrives your love?” Protheus replied, “My tales of love used to weary you, I know you joy not in a love-discourse.” “Ay, Protheus,” returned Valentine, “but that life is altered now. I have done penance for condemning love. For in revenge of my contempt of Love, Love has chased sleep from my enthralled eyes. O gentle Protheus, Love is a mighty lord, and hath so humbled me, that I confess there is no woe like his correction, and no such joy on earth as in his service. I now like no discourse except it be of love. Now I can break my fast, dine, sup, and sleep, upon the very name of love.”

This acknowledgment of the change which love had made in the disposition of Valentine was a great triumph to his friend Protheus. But “friend” Protheus must be called no longer, for the same all-powerful deity, Love, of whom they were speaking, (yea even while they were talking of the change he had made in Valentine) was working in the heart of Protheus; and he, who had till this time been a pattern of true love and perfect friendship, was now, in one short interview with Silvia, become a false friend and a faithless lover; for at the first sight of Silvia, all his love for Julia vanished away like a dream, nor did his long friendship for Valentine deter him from endeavoring to supplant him in her affections; and although, as it will always be, when people of dispositions naturally good become unjust, he had many scruples, before he determined to forsake Julia, and become the rival of Valentine, yet he at length overcame his sense of duty, and yielded himself up, almost without remorse, to his new unhappy passion.

Valentine imparted to him in confidence the whole history of his love, and how carefully they had concealed it from the duke her father, and told him, that despairing of ever being able to obtain his consent, he had prevailed upon Silvia to leave her father’s palace that night, and go with him to Mantua; then he showed Protheus a ladder of ropes, by help of which he meant to assist Silvia to get out of one of the windows of the palace, after it was dark.

Upon hearing this faithful recital of his friend’s dearest secrets, it is hardly possible to be believed, but so it was, that Protheus resolved to go to the duke and disclose the whole to him. This false friend began his tale with many artful speeches to the duke, such as that by the laws of friendship he ought to conceal what he was going to reveal, but that the gracious favor the duke had shown him, and the duty he owed his grace, urged him to tell that, which else no worldly good should draw from him; he then told all he had heard from Valentine, not omitting the ladder of ropes, and the manner in which Valentine meant to conceal them under a long cloak.