d, in the dust of garrets, on the wretched
stairways where the poor leave behind them all the dirt through which
they have passed, there lie shavings of rosewood, scraps of satin and
velvet, bits of tinsel, all the _debris_ of the luxury whose end is to
dazzle the eyes of children. Then the shop-windows are decorated. Behind
the panes of clear glass the gilt of presentation-books rises like a
glittering wave under the gaslight, the stuffs of various and tempting
colours display their brittle and heavy folds, while the young ladies
behind the counter, with their hair dressed tapering to a point and with
a ribbon beneath their collar, tie up the article, little finger in the
air, or fill bags of moire into which the sweets fall like a rain of
pearls.

But, over against this kind of well-to-do business, established in
its own house, warmed, withdrawn behind its rich shop-front, there is
installed the improvised commerce of those wooden huts, open to the
wind of the streets, of which the double row gives to the boulevards
the aspect of some foreign mall. It is in these that you find the true
interest and the poetry of New Year's gifts. Sumptuous in the district
of the Madeleine, well-to-do towards the Boulevard Saint-Denis, of more
"popular" order as you ascend to the Bastille, these little sheds adapt
themselves according to their public, calculate their chances of success
by the more or less well-lined purses of the passers-by. Among these,
there are set up portable tables, laden with trifling objects, miracles
of the Parisian trade that deals in such small things, constructed out
of nothing, frail and delicate, and which the wind of fashion sometimes
sweeps forward in its great rush by reason of their very triviality.
Finally, along the curbs of the footways, lost in the defile of the
carriage traffic which grazes their wandering path, the orange-girls
complete this peripatetic commerce, heaping up the sun-coloured fruit
beneath their lanterns of red paper, crying "La Valence" amid the fog,
the tumult, the excessive haste which Paris displays at the ending of
its year.

Ordinarily, M. Joyeuse was accustomed to make one of the busy crowd
which goes and comes with the jingle of money in its pocket and parcels
in every hand. He would wander about with Bonne Maman at his side on the
lookout for New Year's presents for his girls, stop before the booths of
the small dealers, who are accustomed to do much business and excited