Romainville."

[Illustration: THE INVADERS OF ROMIAINVILLE.]

Romainville! And hereabouts its tufts of chestnuts should be, or were
wont to be of old. I am in the grimy quarter of Belleville. Scene of
factories, of steam-works and tall bleak mansions as it is to-day,
Belleville was once a jolly country village, separated on its hilltop
from Paris, which basked at its feet like a city millionaire sprawling
before the check apron and leather shoes of a rustic beauty. Inhabited
by its little circle of a few thousand souls, it looked around itself
on its eminence, seeing the vast diorama of the city on one side,
and on the other the Près-Saint-Gervais, and the woods of Romainville
waving off to the horizon their diminishing crests of green. A jolly
old tavern, the Ile d'Amour, hung out its colored lamps among the
trees, and the orchestra sounded, and the feet of gay young lovers,
who now are skeletons, beat the floor. The street was a bower of
lilacs, and opposite the Ile d'Amour was the village church.

Then the workmen of the Paris suburbs were invaders: they besieged the
village on Sundays in daring swarms, to be beaten back successfully by
the duties of every successive Monday. Now they are fixed there. They
are the colorless inhabitants of these many-storied houses. The town's
long holiday is over. Where the odorous avenues of lilacs stretched
along, affording bouquets for maman and the children and toothpicks
for ferocious young warriors from the garrisons, are odious lengths
of wall. Everything is changed, and from the gardens the grisettes of
Alfred de Musset are with sighing sent. Their haunts are laboratories
now, and the Ile d'Amour is a mayor's office.