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The very mud in the streets is gathered up and sold. There is a market for everything. An important division of the army of blousards is that composed of the street-sweepers of Paris. They share the Rue Mouffetard and the Place Maubert with the ragpickers, and, like them, are scattered about in various poorer quarters of the city.
"Madame Angot," the heroine of a fashionable opera-bouffe, is a market-woman, and a sort of goddess among the blousards, who are eager to dance to the inspiring melody of her song. The men in authority have little need to persuade the dancers with their cry of "Avancez! avancez!" this time: they have only to collect the sous, and the wild revelry begins.
Few families, even of the better sort of blousards, have a home attractive enough to compete with the fascinations of the street or the café. Even in the Rue Mouffetard there are cafés where wine is sold at two sous the glass, and even cheaper, which would put to the blush some of the most frequented "saloons" of Broadway in point of elegance and comfort for the lounger.
What is their disgust at perceiving that the dancers are men in ancient Greek costumes, who do a sword-fight to music, with periods of sudden tableau-attitude striking! They are a bit ridiculous, these Greeks, flopping about the stage in tights and tunics, and presently three or four blousards near me begin to guy the performance.
The scavenger and the ragpicker, being the lowest grade of blousards, do not always rise to the dignity even of a blouse. They wear a coat sometimes, but it is a marvel of a coat, and was in the last stages of tottering old age before it fell to the blousard.
If you are so innocent as to suppose that these performers are exerting themselves in that manner for the mere pleasure of the thing, you are innocent indeed. They are "artists," and receive a salary from the manager of the Valentino. To innumerable blousards in Paris these dancers are objects of emulation.
Handsome shops occupy the ground-floors, wealthy citizens live in the richly adorned apartments on the upper floors. The blousards who hived in the old street have found a nook in some other old street, or they have fled to the suburbs the best place for them, as it is for all people of limited resources in all large towns.
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