BOOKS.
THE BEGGARS OF PARIS.* PARIS is certainly a wonderful place; not only has it the best police in the world, but the most completely organised system of begging of any capital. A very little reflection serves to explain this; the Parisian, with his love of pleasure, has that tender sensibility to suffering which is as superficial as it is easily moved; and the refined selfishness which cannot bear to be disagreeable, is an admirable subject for the beggar. The Parisian knows the Parisian only too well. The beggar knows his patron to be the happier for his little offering on the shrine of Philanthropy, and both go to their respective amusements—the one to his theatre of varieties, the other to the opera—with clear consciences.
The Penal Code punishes begging ; but it might as well prohibit idleness, or, as our Code, forbid drunkenness. A beggar is brought up before the Magistrate with fifty con- victions perhaps against him. At the most he can get six months, and it is certain that he is a beggar for ever, an incurable of the worst kind, for his disease is neither physical nor mental, but moral. Just as in London, a female drunkard is brought up with hundreds of convictions against her. She gets the heaviest penalty, which still allows of her getting drunk once a fortnight. There is only one really effectua remedy for such cases, and that is the prescription which the chemist gave to the man who thought he had the cattle. plague,—" Take the patient out into the backyard and shoot him."
M. Paulian has masqueraded as a beggar for ten years and has studied the question from the other side as well, so that he speaks with an authority that no one can question. He describes for us the successive stages through which the recruit passes before making a com- fortable competence,—the apprentice stage, the journeyman stage, and finally the professional stage, either sedentary or active. The apprentice, says M. Paulian, will have to Liver le pied de biche. Those who know their Paris well understand this phrase. Having rung the bell at some two hundred doors in an unfrequented street, his day is over by 2 o'clock, and after breakfasting on the scraps which sundry cooks have given him, he can be entertained and made drunk at some low cafe on the sous he has collected. One door in four is a good one. If he chooses a better street where the house-doors are guarded by the watchful concierge, he visits the shops It is you and I, says the author, who pay for this ; the baker gives short weight and the butcher adds a little more coarse meat to your broth. The father who sends his children to beg waits with empty bags in some porch, and when the bags can hold no more, the bread is taken away and sold to breeders of chickens and rabbits and to the coachmen of middle-class families, who use it to give a showy appear- ance to their masters' horses. This is wheels within wheels with a vengeance. The beggar, having acquired some knowledge of the time-honoured art, has to decide whether he shall become a stationary or an active beggar. Now comes the interesting part. The man who has to beard the rich man in his many-menialed house must have address but above all must be an actor. He takes lessons, therefore, from some one who has retired from the business. But this' is not enough; he must know something of the idiosyncracies of the men he proposes to swindle, and a Who's Who is indispensable, and to assist him the Beggar's Bureau issues the Big Game, price six francs.
"Mr. A.—Rich proprietor ; readily gives a five-franc piece; pays the rent if one is ejected." "Mr. B.—Never gives money; ask for clothes." "Mr. F.—Old Radical Re- publican ; very rich; one may describe one's self as a victim of the reactionaries and clergy." These are random extracts. We have not the stomach to repeat the cruel deceptions with which religion furnishes these canning pests. One instance , • The Beggars of Paris (Paris qui Mendie). Translated from the french of M. Made Radian by Lady Hereohea. Lndons Bdward Isrnoldi
will suffice. Let us give an account of M. Paulian's inter- view with a rag-picker of Clichy. The woman, after describing the efforts made by the cure and pastear in the slums, and their desire to have the children baptised into their respective communions, was asked which had the most success. "That depends on the parents," said the woman. —" And your own children?" inquired M. Panlian.—" To tell you the truth," said the woman, after some hesitation, "my child has been twelve times baptised in the Protestant and fourteen times in the Catholic Church ! " As M. Paulian appeared surprised, she added : "The winter has been so severe, Sir. Every baptism brings me in twenty sous and a clean dress."
Men with imagination and brains can dispense with the "big game" as they hit upon some trick, so elaborate that ninety-nine men out of a hundred would scout the idea of its being a farce. Such was the trick played by two ex-convicts, just ten years ago. One Sunday, at a time when the quays were thronged with people, a man threw himself into the Seine, and appeared to sink. Another man dressed in a workman's blouse jumped in, and with great difficulty rescued the would-be suicide. The half-drowned man again tried to rush towards the river, exclaiming, "Why did you not let me die? I have no work and I am starving—let me die ! " His rescuer fumbled for a sixpence, saying, "It is my last. I shall only have to go without dinner to-day,"- whereat the two embraced, crying down each other's backs like the King and the Dauphin in Huckleberry Piny,. The hat went round, and the two were able to leave the quay with well-filled pockets. Some three hours later they were arrested in a tavern, dead drunk and still damp.
We know that in London barrel-organs are let out on hire, but in Paris they do these things far more thoroughly. The contractors have a complete stock-in-trade for their clients, from barrel-organs and babies to poodle-dogs and pictures.
Tell me, now, my good friend, where the explosion took place that is represented in this picture."—" I do not know, Sir," answered the blind man. "I bought this picture at the Hotel Drouot." For the Parisian beggar is frank, knowing how far he may go with safety. M. Paulian quotes the ex- perience of an English Member of Parliament, who, desirous of finding out the influence of the beggar's physique on the public, stationed himself for a whole afternoon at a particular spot, holding out his hand, and got nothing. Changing his dress to rags and his hunting-ground to an out-of-the-way street, he provided himself with a few pieces of bread, one of which at a favourable moment he threw into the mud. Then run- ning forward he would pick up the bread, clean it, and appear to eat it. Every one of the fifteen passers-by returned, and, unsolicited, gave him alms. M. Paulian quotes this story to show how valuable to a beggar his appearance is, and how in course of time the beggar creates a special type,—such a type, for instance, as a bath is instantly fatal to.
"A bath !" said a beggar one day in our author's presence ; "what is the use of a bath ? Does not perspiration wash one ? " True, indeed ; but the poor man'a acorn of a bath only faintly expressed his terror lest he should be robbed of his "water-mark," and so no longer pass current as a beggar. No wearer of a summer bonnet dreads a passing shower more than your real beggar does the fatal water and the still more deadly soap. We have said that they do these things thoroughly in Paris, and we will proceed to clinch the matter with the following evidence of the beggar's attention to details. M. Paulian, having compassion on a man who represented that he was dying of cold, gave him a coat, and dismissed him, being unable to watch if he did the work offered him. A few days after he met the man begging in the same coat, which, however, was barely recognisable. Puzzled at the rapid decay of a garment which he had worn himself the day before giving it away, he took the beggar to dine with him. Daring the meal a farther examination of the coat only in. creased the mystery of its transformation. He questioned the man, who at last confessed : "People would not have believed, Sir, that I was destitute, and I had to pay a woman two sous to alter it for me."—" And who is that woman ? " I asked.—" Oh, she is a woman who leads a blind man about, and who, when she has time, arranges garments for beggars!"
We have heard of the London beggar who kept his carriage and pair, and though Paris cannot have such vain. able places in its gift as Leaden) it supped, a greatst
number of beggars, some of whom accumulate what would be a fortune to the average Frenchman. Father Antoine, after begging for fifteen years at church doors, died. One day the wretched old man with his hump and his never-failing piety was missing. What happened ? His nephew suddenly appeared, and demanded, as the heir-presumptive, an exami- nation of the hump. Investigation revealed that it was a strong-box, and should have contained 96,000 fr. A neighbour had appropriated the box and his friend's savings. The nephew got the fortune and the neighbour got two years. Some who read this may have known Father Antoine with the white beard and the hump, who portioned out his day between Saint Etienne-du-Mont, Saint Augustin, and Saint Salpice, and at one time " did " the rich funerals at the Madeleine. Let it suffice that he was a scoundrel and that his real name was Pacciarelli. Yet there are worse crimes than his. What of the women who murder their children by degrees to excite the pity of the passers-by ! This very day the woman Ousouf, having despatched her own children to a better world in this fashion, continues to beg with a hired child. One can hire a child for thirty sous a day, and they will exchange it if anything should happen to it. "There is to-day," says M. Paulian, "a lame boy with a sweet face on the Boulevards who sells
the Soir Three times a day a man comes and empties his pockets."
We used to know a black-bearded, short squarely built man who blacked boots not far from St. Pancras Station. He would turn a somersault before using his brushes; but though we gave him 2d. to see him do it, trade was not good enough, and one day he disappeared. Three days later he reappeared, "blind," and standing against the street-wall of University College. We wonder if he found the medical student as superstitious as the Parisian student, but doubt it strongly, for he has moved. Men like him sometimes pretend deafness, but more often they are blind, for the sympathy with the blind is universal,—a fact of which beggars everywhere are well aware.
We had a servant in our household who became engaged to a man whose means of subsistence we were unable to discover, though he appeared to be comfortably off. After some per- suasion, the girl explained that he was an " asker," "and nicely off, too, ma'am." There are Rakers in all ranks of life. A celebrated instance of one will occur to our readers, whose case created some commotion a year or two ago. London is not pestered with these robbers of the poor as thoughtless, easy-going Paris is, but we have too many of the "retired" type, beggars who are supported by a small circle of benevo- lent families. Let us recommend one golden maxim before we leave M. Paulian,—Never give a farthing to a beggar in the street.
Paris qui Maio is a fascinating book, and thanks to Lady Herschell's admirable and scholarly translation, a Londoner may now know the Parisian beggars better than he knows his own. As for M. Louis Paulian, we must regard him as one of the benefactors of the age.
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