feeding spectacle in Europe. There are more than a dozen shops in Paris
where this mode of procuring a dinner is practiced, chiefly in the back
streets abutting on the Pantheon. About two o'clock, a parcel of men in
dirty blouses, with sallow faces, and an indescribable mixture of
recklessness, jollity, and misery--strange as the juxtaposition of terms
may seem--lurking about their eyes and the corners of their mouths, take
their seats in a room where there is not the slightest appearance of any
preparation for food, nothing but half-a-dozen old deal-tables, with
forms beside them, on the side of the room, and one large table in the
middle. They pass away the time in vehement gesticulation, and talking
in a loud tone; so much of what they say is in _argot_, that the
stranger will not find it easy to comprehend them. He would think they
were talking crime or politics--not a bit of it; their talk is
altogether about their mistresses. Love and feeding make up the
existence of these beings; and we may judge of the quality of the former
by what we are about to see of the latter. A huge bowl is at last
introduced, and placed on the table in the middle of the room. At the
same time a set of basins, corresponding to the number of the guests,
are placed on the side-tables. A woman, with her nose on one side, good
eyes, and the thinnest of all possible lips, opening every now and then
to disclose the white teeth which garnish an enormous mouth, takes her
place before it. She is the presiding deity of the temple; and there is
not a man present to whom it would not be the crowning felicity of the
moment to obtain a smile from features so little used to the business of
smiling, that one wonders how they would set about it if the necessity
should ever arise. Every cap is doffed with a grim politeness peculiar
to that class of humanity, and a series of compliments fly into the face
of Madame Michel, part leveled at her eyes, and part at the laced cap,
in perfect taste, by which those eyes are shrouded. Mere Michel,
however, says nothing in return, but proceeds to stir with a thick