ly, no cigarettes
and no _tabac de chique_ are allowed to enter in its composition; the
two cheaper brands manufactured are _le petit_ and _le gros_. There are
special clients for this merchandise, ranging from the inmates of
asylums for old men and the insane patients at Charenton to military men
on insufficient pensions who make their purchases hurriedly and with
anxious glances around. When the fine season opens, the _ramasseur de
megots_ who has collected a good winter harvest will issue from the city
to sell his merchandise in the suburbs. In this irregular commerce he
runs the risks of denunciation by the authorized _bureaux de tabac_, and
of six months in prison, although his tobacco has once paid the _regie_,
or tax.

All this world of the people, which ranges from M. Brispot's comfortable
and respectable _Bon Bourgeois_, taking his summer ease in his
court-yard, down to almost unknown depths, has its moments of leisure
and takes its relaxation as well as its betters. Two of M. Vierge's
characteristic sketches may serve to illustrate two of the more popular
and more innocent methods,--the informal manner in which the frequenters
of the Parc de Montsouris, on the line of the southern fortifications,
dispose themselves on the grass, around the kiosque of the military
band, to listen to the music, and a very characteristic feature of the
popular observance of the fete of the 14th of July, the balls in the
open street. At almost every important crossing or open space, not only
in the so-called _quartiers excentriques_, but in such official
neighborhoods as those of the Louvre and the Hotel de Ville, temporary
bandstands are set up, and around them the people dance cheerfully,
mostly in ungraceful waltzes, all the evening, and frequently all night.
In front of the cafes in the popular quarters, the music of a violin or
a hurdy-gurdy, or even of the dreadful organ of the "merry-go-rounds,"
or _chevaux de bois_, will furnish inspiration enough to perspiring
couples who will repeatedly leave their beer or their _sirop_ to revolve
giddily on the pavement till, quite breathless, they return to their
seats. All this is done with such frank simplicity and good nature, such
a characteristically cheerful French appropriation of the public street
for domestic purposes, that the foreigner, sitting looking on somewhat
scornfully at first, gradually veers round to their point of view, and,
if he be young enough, probably ends by