Here, apparelled in all sorts of unimaginable tailoring, in jaunty colored cap or flapped sombrero, his pipe dangling from his button-hole, his hair and beard displaying every eccentricity under heaven, the Paris student, the Pays Latiniste pur sang, lived and had his being.  Poring over the bookstalls in the Place du Pantheon or the Rue des Gres—­hurrying along towards this or that college with a huge volume under each arm, about nine o’clock in the morning—­haunting the cafes at midday and the restaurants at six—­swinging his legs out of upper windows and smoking in his shirt-sleeves in the summer evenings—­crowding the pit of the Odeon and every part of the Theatre du Pantheon—­playing wind instruments at dead of night to the torment of his neighbors, or, in vocal mood, traversing the Quartier with a society of musical friends about the small hours of the morning—­getting into scuffles with the gendarmes—­flirting, dancing, playing billiards and the deuce; falling in love and in debt; dividing his time between Aristotle and Mademoiselle Mimi Pinson ... here, and here only, in all his phases, at every hour of the day and night, he swarmed, ubiquitous.

And here, too (a necessary sequence), flourished the fair and frail grisette.  Her race, alas! is now all but extinct—­the race of Fretillon, of Francine, of Lisette, Musette, Rosette, and all the rest of that too fascinating terminology—­the race immortalized again and again by Beranger, Gavarni, Balzac, De Musset; sketched by a hundred pencils and described by a hundred pens; celebrated in all manner of metres and set to all manner of melodies; now caricatured and now canonized; now painted wholly en noir and now all couleur de rose; yet, however often described, however skilfully analyzed, remaining for ever indescribable, and for ever defying analysis!

“De tous les produits Parisiens,” says Monsieur Jules Janin (himself the quintessence of everything most Parisian), “le produit le plus Parisien, sans contredit, c’est la grisette.”  True; but our epigrammatist should have gone a step farther.  He should have added that the grisette pur sang is to be found nowhere except in Paris; and (still a step farther) nowhere in Paris save between the Pont Neuf and the Barriere d’Enfer.  There she reigns; there (ah! let me use the delicious present tense—­let me believe that I still live in Arcadia!)—­there she lights up the old streets with her smile; makes the old walls ring with her laughter; flits over the crossings like a fairy; wears the most coquettish of little caps and the daintiest of little shoes; rises to her work with the dawn; keeps a pet canary; trains a nasturtium round her window; loves as heartily as she laughs, and almost as readily; owes not a sou, saves not a centime; sews on Adolphe’s buttons, like a good neighbor; is never so happy as when Adolphe in return takes her to Tivoli or the Jardin Turc; adores galette, sucre d’orge, and Frederick Lemaitre; and looks upon a masked ball and a debardeur dress as the summit of human felicity.