s hair and beard displaying every eccentricity under heaven, the Paris
student, the _Pays Latiniste pur sang_, lived and had his being. Poring
over the bookstalls in the Place du Pantheon or the Rue des
Gres--hurrying along towards this or that college with a huge volume
under each arm, about nine o'clock in the morning--haunting the cafes at
midday and the restaurants at six--swinging his legs out of
upper windows and smoking in his shirt-sleeves in the summer
evenings--crowding the pit of the Odeon and every part of the Theatre du
Pantheon--playing wind instruments at dead of night to the torment of
his neighbors, or, in vocal mood, traversing the Quartier with a society
of musical friends about the small hours of the morning--getting into
scuffles with the gendarmes--flirting, dancing, playing billiards and
the deuce; falling in love and in debt; dividing his time between
Aristotle and Mademoiselle Mimi Pinson ... here, and here only, in all
his phases, at every hour of the day and night, he swarmed, ubiquitous.

And here, too (a necessary sequence), flourished the fair and frail
grisette. Her race, alas! is now all but extinct--the race of Fretillon,
of Francine, of Lisette, Musette, Rosette, and all the rest of that too
fascinating terminology--the race immortalized again and again by
Beranger, Gavarni, Balzac, De Musset; sketched by a hundred pencils and
described by a hundred pens; celebrated in all manner of metres and set
to all manner of melodies; now caricatured and now canonized; now
painted wholly _en noir_ and now all _couleur de rose_; yet, however
often described, however skilfully analyzed, remaining for ever
indescribable, and for ever defying analysis!

"De tous les produits Parisiens," says Monsieur Jules Janin (himself the
quintessence of everything most Parisian), "le produit le plus Parisien,
sans contredit, c'est la grisette." True; but our epigrammatist should
have gone a step farther. He should have added that the grisette _pur
sang_ is to be found nowhere except in Paris; and (still a step farther)
nowhere in Paris save between the Pont Neuf and the Barriere d'Enfer.
There she reigns; there (ah! let me use the delicious present tense--let
me believe that I still live in Arcadia!)--there she lights up the old
streets with her smile; makes the old walls ring with her laughter;
flits over the crossings like a fairy; wears the most coquettish of
little caps and the daintiest of little shoes; rises