LF ACQUAINTED WITH THE IMPOLITE WORLD AND ITS PLACES OP
UNFASHIONABLE RESORT.

Mueller and I dined merrily at the Cafe of the Trois Freres Provencaux,
discussed our coffee and cigars outside the Rotonde in the Palais Royal,
and then started off in search of adventures. Striking up in a
north-easterly direction through a labyrinth of narrow streets, we
emerged at the Rue des Fontaines, just in front of that famous
second-hand market yclept the Temple. It was Saturday night, and the
business of the place was at its height. We went in, and turning aside
from the broad thoroughfares which intersect the market at right angles,
plunged at once into a net-work of crowded side-alleys, noisy and
populous as a cluster of beehives. Here were bargainings, hagglings,
quarrellings, elbowings, slang, low wit, laughter, abuse, cheating, and
chattering enough to turn the head of a neophyte like myself. Mueller,
however, was in his element. He took me up one row and down another,
pointed out all that was curious, had a nod for every grisette, and an
answer for every touter, and enjoyed the Babel like one to the
manner born.

"Buy, messieurs, buy! What will you buy?" was the question that
assailed us on both sides, wherever we went.

"What do you sell, _mon ami ?_" was Mueller's invariable reply.

"What do you want, m'sieur?"

"Twenty thousand francs per annum, and the prettiest wife in Paris,"
says my friend; a reply which is sure to evoke something _spirituel_,
after the manner of the locality.

"This is the most amusing place in Paris," observes he. "Like the
Alsatia of old London, it has its own peculiar _argot,_ and its own
peculiar privileges. The activity of its commerce is amazing. If you buy
a pocket-handkerchief at the first stall you come to, and leave it
unprotected in your coat-pocket for five minutes, you may purchase it
again at the other end of the alley before you leave. As for the
resources of the market, they are inexhaustible. You may buy anything
you please here, from a Court suit to a cargo of old rags. In this alley
(which is the aristocratic quarter), are sold old jewelry, old china,
old furniture, silks that have rustled at the Tuileries; fans that may
have fluttered at the opera; gloves once fitted to tiny hands, and yet
bearing a light soil where the rings were worn beneath; laces that may
have been the property of Countesses or Cardinals; masquerade suits,
epaulets, uniforms, furs, perfumes, artificial f