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not, Will? And oh! you must not let any thought of me bring a shadow between you. Promise me that."

They took hands, but neither spoke. "Now I can do nothing," she said, "nothing

at all but wait and hope and pray. Come, now, and comfort my father, who will have nobody to talk to except myself. I think we shall talk about nothing at all, every evening, except you two."

THE PARIS OUVRIER.

By R. HEATH, AUTHOR OF "EDGAR QUINET, HIS EARLY LIFE AND WRITINGS," ETC.

THE

An ouvrier family.

FIRST PAPER.

HE French Republic seems arriving at that condition of the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages, in which the people were divided into the popolo grasso and the popolo magro, leading to a ruinous struggle of three centuries. To those who care more for the interests of the Kingdom of Heaven than for those of any class, who love and pity men be they ouvriers or bourgeoisie, work-people or employers, the information in the following papers is addressed.

I.

THE "OUVRIER " AT HOME.

Like all the inhabitants of Paris the ouvriers dwell in houses of five or six stories high.

The ground floor is let out in shops, between which the principal staircase is entered by a narrow passage. At the back there is a small court-yard, skirted on one side by a wing from the main building, of from two to three stories high. Each flat of the main building and of its wing is occupied by several tenants, so that such buildings contain on an average 50 different tenants, with as many as from 120 to 150 inhabitants. In one that I have visited there were 47 tenants, the total number of persons in the building at night being 114.

Workmen inhabit all quarters of Paris, the better sort preferring to live at some distance from their work. The north-east of Paris is, however, peculiarly their quarter; the Faubourg of Saint Antoine and that of Saint Martin, with the districts known as La Villette and Belleville, are almost entirely inhabited by ouvriers, and the tradespeople who supply their wants. The neighbourhood of the Canal Saint Martin is altogether a different Paris to that usually seen by the visitor. It has more of the cheerless look of our own manufacturing districts; however, the bright sun of Paris, the rows of trees, and the fountains prevent it from looking gloomy or sad.

In this neighbourhood lodging is not so dear as in the older parts of the city. In very miserable and dirty streets in the Quar tier Latin, the ouvrier has to pay as much as 150 francs a year for a single room; two rooms cost him 280 francs a year; and two rooms and a little place, which he can use as a kitchen, 360 francs a year. This is enormous, and amounts to about 20 per cent. of his income, supposing him to work full time, and not to belong to one of the more skilled trades.

The question of rent is one of the greatest grievances of which Paris workmen have to complain-it keeps them in poverty and in anxiety, and, it is alleged, often drives the whole family to moral ruin; the wife selling

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her honour to obtain the means, and the husband giving himself up in despair to drink.

How impossible it is to settle questions that affect the tenderest feelings of humanity by an assertion of the rights of property, the following story strikingly illustrates: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 huissier 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 to 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

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 déjeuner.

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

Radis, Sardines, Beurre
Bouillon.

Vin Ordinaire
Bœuf garni
Ragoût Mouton
Pied Mouton.
Oie Navet
Civet lièvre
Cotelette nature
Bifteck garni....

Oie et veau garnis
Pomme ragoût
Pommes sautées
Salade et fruits.
Fromage et confitures
Café nature
Café liqueur

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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 workman's wife has, with her children, the barricades, and planted the flag of the an early meal of café au lait or bouillon, the Commune in the teeth of the besiegers. In children taking with them to school sandone of the last days of the defence her eldest wiches of bread and cheese, or something. son was separated from her in the struggle, from the previous day's dinner. The mother and the youngest was killed at her feet. takes a similar déjeuner in the middle of the Frantic, she seized the body of the child and, day, the whole family looking forward to the springing up a barricade, hurled it upon the third meal, indiscriminately called diner or bayonets of the soldiers, then tearing open souper, as the principal one of the day. This her dress she cried wildly, "Kill me! kill consists of soup, meat, vegetables or salad, me!" She fell over the stones, but was not cheese or prunes, and fresh fruit according dead. "Another of these sluts," cried the to the season. young officer in charge; "finish her!"

An ouvrier'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 ouvrier cannot 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 ouvrier to leave home fasting, taking his first two meals at a restaurant or cabaret near the place

Two or three times a week the pot-au-feu is put on, and rich soup and bouf bouilli obtained. Thin soup is made from the water in which the vegetables have been boiled, or with onions, of which the Paris ouvrier 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 arrondissement 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 Boucheries Hippophagiques. 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, Ane: première qualité, 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 estomac de bœuf, mou de veau, pied de

mouton.

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 ouvrier's home is the existence of 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 an ouvrier's home are said to equal in value his furniture. His own clothing costs him about 120 francs a year, washing and mending raising the cost by 60 francs; the clothing of his wife and two children would be about 220 francs

more.

The ouvrier'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 blanchisseuses, or in a fruit or newspaper stall. Often she undertakes the duties of a femme de ménage, i.e. acting as general servant for the first few hours of the day in some bourgeois family.

When she thus works she has to send her children to the crèche or to the asile; but this is not frequent, as the families of ouvriers in Paris are usually very small.

earn as a skilled workman more than his father.

As a rule the ouvrier 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, "y a pas à blaguer quand on a cinq ou six mioches."

It does not appear to be easy to outwit a Parisienne. 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 ouvrier 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.

The

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 ouvrier. road seen from a balcony is like an immense field of snowdrops. 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.

Those who have the largest are generally of German origin, coming from Alsace, Belgium, and countries bordering on the Rhine. She leaves politics to her husband, she has That very large families sometimes are found no objection to give her son to the amnistiés among ouvriers in Paris is proved by one case (had she not an uncle herself in the Comwhere a day labourer, a native of the depart-mune?), but her little girl must make her first ment of the Haut-Rhin, received a prize of communion. And to this end she takes her 3,000 francs for bringing up a family of child from the lay school and sends her to the fifteen children respectably on a wage of sœurs. And the good ouvrier, far from obtwo francs and a half a day. In the end hejecting, throws all aside to go with them to was assisted by his son, who was able to church, cleans his boots, puts on his hat and

paletot, and stands full of admiration for his little fairy of a child.

The domestic affections of the ouvrier, where he has not been demoralised 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. An ouvrier 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 ouvrier, 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

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precarious wages of a day labourer, she re- | kennel (errand boy) of him because one gets mained as much part of his family as the children.

The ouvrier 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. The true ouvrier 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 skipXXIV-17

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 thou knowest nothing. Henri shall be a judgment as the man. Yes, yes, thou art a mechanic; the devil may burn me if ever he verv good sort of a woman, but at bottom becomes a scribbling puppet."

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