rais, where
the shops have such lofty ceilings and stately double doors, people
work all night, handling gauze, flowers and straw, fastening labels on
satin-covered boxes, sorting out, marking and packing; the innumerable
details of the toy trade, that great industry upon which Paris places
the sign-manual of its refined taste. There is a smell of green wood,
of fresh paint, of glistening varnish, and in the dust of the garrets,
on the rickety stairways where the common people deposit all the mud
through which they have tramped, chips of rosewood are strewn about,
clippings of satin and velvet, bits of tinsel, all the debris of the
treasures employed to dazzle childish eyes. Then the shop-windows array
themselves. Behind the transparent glass the gilt binding of gift-books
ascends like a gleaming wave under the gas-lights, rich stuffs of
kaleidoscopic, tempting hues display their heavy, graceful folds, while
the shop-girls, with their hair piled high upon their heads and ribbons
around their necks, puff their wares with the little finger in the air,
or fill silk bags, into which the bonbons fall like a shower of pearls.

But face to face with this bourgeois industry, firmly established and
intrenched behind its gorgeous shop fronts, is the ephemeral industry
carried on in the stalls built of plain boards, open to the wind from
the street, standing in a double row which gives the boulevard the
aspect of a foreign market place. There are to be found the real
interest, the poetry of New Year's gifts. Luxurious in the Madeleine
quarter, less ostentatious toward Boulevard Saint-Denis, cheaper and
more tawdry as you approach the Bastille, these little booths change
their character to suit their customers, estimate their chances of
success according to the condition of the purses of the passers-by.
Between them stand tables covered with trifles, miracles of the petty
Parisian trades, made of nothing, fragile and insignificant, but
sometimes whirled away by fashion in one of its fierce gusts, because
of their very lightness. And lastly, along the sidewalks, lost in the
line of vehicles which brush against them as they stroll along, the
orange-women put the final touch to this ambulatory commerce, heaping
up the sun-colored fruit under their red lanterns, and crying: "La
Valence!" in the fog, the uproar, the excessive haste with which Paris
rushes to meet the close of the year.

Ordinarily M. Joyeuse made a part of the happy cr