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The Palais de Justice deserves to be particularly remarked for its classical elegance, and contrasts well with the black solid arches of the Arenes, near which it is placed. "Monsieour! les antiquités! Heou! Monsieour! les Arenes! Commissionaire pour voir la Maison Carrée! Heou ou! Monsieour! decrotteur, s'il vous plait!
The one is a cabinet de decrotteur, where the art of blacking shoes is carried to a pitch of perfection hitherto unknown in this country.
He would have been as invaluable to a tailor as was to the Parisian decrotteur the poodle instructed by him to sully with his paws the shoes of the passengers; for, in the exuberance of his gladness, he but too often rent insufferably the vestments of the hapless pedestrians in his line of fire.
At the present day, the decrotteurs or shoe-blacks still exercise their profession on the Pont Neuf and in other quarters; but, as a refinement of the art, there is also opened, at each of the principal entrances of the Palais du Tribunat, a cabinet de decrotteur, or small apartment, where you are invited to take a chair, and presented with the daily papers.
The decrotteur, who cleans your shoes at the corner of the Pont Neuf, has a tail of this kind hanging down to his rump, and even the peasant who drives an ass loaded with dung, wears his hair en queue, though, perhaps, he has neither shirt nor breeches. This is the ornament upon which he bestows much time and pains, and in the exhibition of which he finds full gratification for his vanity.
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