f the working man, there was a gratuitous
distribution of sausages once a year on the king's fete-day. The
ordinary rendezvous of provincial and metropolitan actors out of an
engagement was not at the Cafe de Suede on the Boulevard Montmartre, but
under the trees at the Palais-Royal. Frederick Lemaitre went to
confession and to mass every time he "created" a new role. The
Legitimists consented to leave their aristocratic seclusion, and to
breathe the same air with the bourgeoisie and proletarians of the
Boulevard du Crime, to see him play. The Government altered the title of
Sue and Goubeaux's drama "Les Pontons Anglais" into "Les Pontons,"
short, and made the authors change the scene from England to Spain.
Alexandre Dumas chaffed Scribe, and flung his money right and left;
while the other saved it, bought country estates, and produced as many
as twenty plays a year (eight more than he had contracted for). The
National Guards went in uniform and in companies to shoot hares and
rabbits on the Plaine Saint-Denis, and swaggered about on the
Boulevards, ogling the women. Vidocq kept a private inquiry office in
the Passage Vivienne, and made more money by blackmailing or catching
unfaithful husbands than by catching thieves. Bougival, Asnieres and
Joinville-le-Pont had not become riparian resorts. The plaster elephant
on the Place de la Bastille was crumbling to pieces. The sentimental
romances of Madame Loisa Puget proved the delight of every bourgeoise
family, while the chorus to every popular song was "Larifla, larifla,
fla, fla, fla."

Best of all, from the working man's point of view, was the low price of
bread and wine; the latter could be had at four sous the litre in the
wine-shops. He, the working man, still made excursions with his wife and
children to the Artesian well at Grenelle; and if stranded perchance in
the Champs-Elysees, stood lost in admiration at the tiny carriage with
ponies to match, driven by Theophile Gautier, who had left off wearing
the crimson waistcoats wherewith in former days he hoped to annoy the
bourgeois, though he ceased not to rail at him by word of mouth and with
his pen. He was not singular in that respect. Among his set, the hatred
of the bourgeois was ingrained; it found constant vent in small things.
Nestor Roqueplan wore jackboots at home instead of slippers, because the
latter chaussure was preferred by the shopkeeper. Gavarni published the
most biting pictorial satires against him