Paris after dark

• Pares la unit, Paris by night, Paris bei Nacht, Paris de noche—that Paris •which the Dieulefit Agency, 10, rue du Holder, offered to show me for thirty francs, including drinks, was certainly not the Paris that anyone would wish to meet. But this evening I was seized by a strong desire to see the most absurd side of my native city, the side most foreign to myself. In the waiting room of the Agency suggestive posters, painted by hand, continued the tradition of Russian Grand Ducal sprees, of dangerous songs, of Apaches, which a false and sentimental legend of Paris has perpetuated throughout the world under various names ever since Eugene Sue. I was the only French person amongst the trippers, I and a modest young woman, whose intentions I immediately guessed; she was evidently a regular customer of the motorbuses.

The first sight pointed out to us by the guide was the swanky Samaritaine. The rue Vignon, cutting sombrely through a well-lit quarter, had a forbidding air, and was painful to look at. The man with the megaphone realized this: "We shall take streets that are not so sad," he said. He was so pleased with this phrase that he repeated it in three languages. He showed us the Lavoisier side of the Madeleine; the Printemps was passed over in silence; at the Galeries Lafayette, he emphasized the word La-fa-yette, and the North Americans bowed. In front of the Theâtre Pigalle the guide, who was totally lacking in a sense of the appropriate, said: "We are entering gay Paree." Moulin Rouge, Chat Noir, Néant. Then the Ciel and Enfer cabarets. That is all that remains of the romantic tradition; it is exactly like the setting of the medieval Mysteries, as imagined by Victor Hugo.

We got out at the foot of the Sacré Cœur. In the golden sky of Paris, touched with rose above the boulevards, I reconstructed various literary images of my adolescence, in which Zola dominated. Five motorbuses, which I had not noticed, followed us. A hundred foreigners or more went into an intimate cabaret, where two refectory tables with a hundred lemonades and two hundred straws awaited them. On a platform an illuminated backdrop represented Notre Dame, with life-sized moon and cats. An old man announced "My Lords, you are about to hear Mademoiselle de Luce, known as Ebony Helmet, the incestuous offspring of Monsieur Poincaré and Mademoiselle Mistinguett." The impossibility of such a union was immediately seen by everybody, even by the Japanese.

• It was not yet midnight, but already the shadows of the night workers were emerging from sleep and beginning the second watch. The bakers were kneading the dough, preparing the next day's munitions, while they stoked their ovens, one side of them white, the other red, like Swiss guards. In the narrow streets of old Montmartre stale vapors rose towards the stars from the cleaning wagons, while the street cleaners in high rubber boots bestrode iron-ringed hoses which were writing on the pavement. At the street corners ladies of the night were watchfully waiting. They did not display a flowered garter or sit on the men's knees, as Frenchwomen do in foreign comic papers. Only their immobility and silence were provocative, only their eyelashes drooped as they gave a passing glance, and their lips tightly pressed together offered neither kisses nor smiles.

I went hack to the buses. Neither Werther's Moonlight, played on a broomstick, nor the Montmartre Marseillaise had succeeded in detaining the Nordics and Asiatics, who were oozing into the street like paint from a tube. Mile, de Luce had barely time to sell a picture postcard of herself.

After a shower, the night was lovely. The hoods of the cars were let down. The Frenchwoman, having failed to interest any foreigner. returned to her own country; that is to say, she resigned herself to talking to me. We crossed the Place du Tertre:

The Guide: This is the place where the artists and poets live . . .

The IVoman (leaning towards me) : He says nothing about the gangsters!

At the Place de l'Etoile kneeling men, in iron and glass masks, were repairing the tram lines and their oxy-acetylene blowpipes sent up mauve fireworks, beside which the flame of the Unknown Soldier seemed pale.

PAUL MORAND

The illuminated Champs-Elysées look like a rectilineal fair ground, broken by the roundabouts of the Rond-Point and Concorde. As the guide points out the restaurants and forgets the public monuments, the lady who is rubbing against me grows indignant :

"He's not telling half enough!"

Who will tell that "half" which everyone in Paris passes over in silence?

The quays. Under the bridges beggars have lit fires whose flames are reflected on the Seine.

The Pont-Neuf.

Oh!

Henri IV.

Oh!

The Odéon Theatre.

Immediately the guide says:

"Here the body of Victor Hugo reposes."

The second stop is at the entrance to the Catacombs, in the rue MoufTetard. It is long past midnight. Our caravan crosses a dark courtyard, surrounded by houses of the kind they build in Hollywood to represent Paris. Cellar rats, cellar stairway. Here lived the first Christians. Subterranean masses were celebrated here during the French Revolution. Corridors plunge deep under ground. A halberdier, wearing a sixteenth century helmet and squeezed in his leather shoulder straps, precedes us. We enter the Thieves' Gallery. Opera supers in German uniforms are drinking wine from golden goblets. They angrily declare the cards they are going to play. We stop at the Talking Well. It was on this very spot that M. Jakal, the police officer in The Mohicans of Paris, overheard the Bonapartist conspirators, who were met in a lower room, which we are not shown. An unemployed basso from the Opera at Nice, disguised as a quarryman, sings What the Stones Tell, while pushing a wheelbarrow. Far in the background a fifty centimes night shelter, where beggars sleep. These poor wretches seem dead; the foreigners shrink from this sinister spectacle of unemployment and poverty. It was not until afterwards that I discovered that these unemployed sleeping in the shadows were simply dummy figures.

The motorbus proceeds to Montparnasse. The rue de la Gaíte has already lost all its gaiety. The Casino, the GaTte Palace, Bobino, the Gaíte Montparnasse, Baty, are closed, in darkness. Also the audition halls where "no singing" is recommended. In odd corners, vendors of chestnuts, oranges, pancakes, apples in caramel. An oyster bar at the lies Marquises. Near the Dome the tobacco shop with the newspapers of all countries. The Coupole, the Rotonde, the Gaufre de Bruxelles. Various people meeting in front of Baumann's, the celebrated florist. Stuck to the window pane telegrams state that this artist in flowers is in touch with the entire world. Night joints where the debris of White Russia and the Antilles find shelter are hastily enumerated.

We come back towards the Seine. In the Bar de la Place Maubert workers from the Halles are drinking white wine. In the Bar Marcel, the Bar Marius, the heat of the stoves is so great that it has cracked the window panes, which are held together with newspapers. At the Bouteille d'Or, in the rue Dante, on Montebello Quay, the poor devils who unload vegetables at night are waiting for the arrival of the train from Arpajon. How many times has the whistle of this train, packed with vegetables, puffing down the Boulevard Saint-Michel, reminded us that it was two o'clock in the morning, as we lingered in bars and cafés? More perfumed with cahhages, carrots and celery than a soup pot, it left behind it, in the heart of the city, a healthy smell of earth and manure, from the fields of Bourg-la-Reine, Long-jumeau and Monthléry. Slowly the little Arpajon train passes the Palais de Justice, branches off at the Châtelet. In front of the Church of Saint Eustache squares are marked off in chalk, reserved for leeks, for salsifis. In an hour people will move about in trenches dug between salads and artichokes. I hear the pigs being sawn, like the head of John the Baptist in Strauss' opera; at the corner of the rue Montorgueil the sausage vendor is selling hot sausages sandwiched in a roll. The Père Tranquille is now only a memory; the broker customers meet at the Beau Noir. the Cadran d'Or, the Vrai Chablis. The Petit Trou, beloved of all true night hawks, will not open until four. At the Bar des Halles, the Tête de Cochon, the Pied de Mouton, people eat and drink standing up. At the Comptoir des Pores, in the Rue Veauvilliers, there are vats of blood; hampers of snails in the Rue Rambuteau; the Rue Pirouette is blocked by bastions of dandelion leaves in baskets, which look like seventeenth century defence works.

(Continued on page 62)

(Continued from page 27)

In front of the Jean Part bar stand barrels, not of powder but of apples, before the house where Moliere was horn they are pouring hot soup into howls. In the Rue Montmartre the rotary presses cease humming and the first newspapers are about to appear, damp from the printing press. We return towards the boulevards. A thick haze greases the asphalt, making the taxis waltz in the shape of an S. The Tuileries are like a huge abandoned cemetery, and the cyclist police do their rounds in order to prevent the ghosts of the kings of France from climbing over the railings. Rack again in the rue du Helder, the terminus. 1 leave the bus; dubious guides are coming up to the foreigners, offering them artistic nudities in envelopes in which an oval opening permits one to see the nudities, and proposing to initiate them into the sacred mysteries. 1 go on foot in the direction of the Place Clichy. It is three o'clock. On every hand the rag-pickers appear, their hooks on their shoulders; they frighten the cats, which reluctantly leave the ash cans to them. Green, bareheaded young men, in full dress, are returning from a ball. The pharmacy in the Place Clichy, the little cafés at the corner of the Rue de Douai, are serving aspirin and coffee with cream. The sidewalk is a colonial exhibition: Negroes, Annamites, Sidis. The fine world, reduced by the depression, the former haute noce, gathers in the neighborhood of the Rue Pigalle. All this is now without interest: two hundred people, always the same. The most picturesque figures in Paris at four in the morning are to be found at Dupont's: theatre ushers, typesetters, reporters, messenger boys, women in charge of public toilets, a lower middle-class public, whose modest clothes are emphasized by the nickel percolators and the hundred thousand candles. A few prostitutes, quietly dressed. Flower girls open their bags and count their copper and nickel profits. Underneath the picture hanging from the ceiling like a chandelier are the words: "Everything at Dupont's is good." The Bar-y-ton, the Soupe à FOignon, are closed, and the Pompadour does not smile at the porters lying on the ground on beds of newspapers, as if they had been shot against the wall. Faces are paler and paler. Numerous Russians. In front of the Sandwich Ideal men too old to be sailors are waiting. Recently one of the newspapers demanded the suppression of these false sailors.

Emerging from this oasis of heat and light I enter the mortal silence of the European quarter. From three till five Paris really sleeps. At the Gare Saint-Lazare signals shine in vain, for this is the hour when no train leaves or arrives at any station. I return home on foot. On the seats along the boulevards there are only a few old women seated; they talk exquisite French and one surmises that they have had misfortunes. A refined profile emerges from their fur stoles, made of a thousand specimens of rabbit skin sewn together. The shadows of the trees fall upon the walls like trellis work. In front of the Bank of France a Republican guard, in his drugget cloak, watches over the seventy-eight milliards in gold which have justly returned to us because too many foreigners have wanted to see Paris at night.