I was gazing at the preparations for the great daily orgy of Paris when
I espied a throng of people bustling suspiciously in a corner. A few
lanterns threw a yellow light upon this crowd. Children, women, and men
with outstretched hands were fumbling in dark piles which extended along
the footway. I thought that those piles must be remnants of meat sold
for a trifling price, and that all those wretched people were rushing
upon them to feed. I drew near, and discovered my mistake. The heaps
were not heaps of meat, but heaps of violets. All the flowery poesy of
the streets of Paris lay there, on that muddy pavement, amidst mountains
of food. The gardeners of the suburbs had brought their sweet-scented
harvests to the markets and were disposing of them to the hawkers. From
the rough fingers of their peasant growers the violets were passing to
the dirty hands of those who would cry them in the streets. At winter
time it is between four and six o'clock in the morning that the flowers
of Paris are thus sold at the Halles. Whilst the city sleeps and its
butchers are getting all ready for its daily attack of indigestion, a
trade in poetry is plied in dark, dank corners. When the sun rises the
bright red meat will be displayed in trim, carefully dressed joints, and
the violets, mounted on bits of osier, will gleam softly within their
elegant collars of green leaves. But when they arrive, in the dark
night, the bullocks, already ripped open, discharge black blood, and
the trodden flowers lie prone upon the footways. . . . I noticed just in
front of me one large bunch which had slipped off a neighbouring mound
and was almost bathing in the gutter. I picked it up. Underneath, it
was soiled with mud; the greasy, fetid sewer water had left black stains
upon the flowers. And then, gazing at these exquisite daughters of our
gardens and our woods, astray amidst all the filth of the city, I began
to ponder. On what woman's bosom would those wretched flowerets open
and bloom? Some hawker would dip them in a pail of water, and of all the
bitter odours of the Paris mud they would retain but a slight pungency,