There is a little room at the rear, the walls of which are painted
with scenes of celebrated murders, and the portraits of the murderers,
of anarchists, and of their foes the police. A sharp-faced boy points
to these with his cap, and recites his lesson in a high singsong,
and in an _argot_ which makes all he says quite unintelligible. He
is interesting chiefly because the men of whom he speaks are heroes
to him, and he roars forth the name of "Antoine, who murdered the
policeman Jervois," as though he were saying Gambetta, the founder
of the republic, and with the innocent confidence that you will
share with him in his enthusiasm. The pictures are ghastly things,
in which the artist has chiefly done himself honor in the generous
use of scarlet paint for blood, and in the way he has shown how by
rapid gradations the criminal descends from well-dressed innocence to
ragged viciousness, until he reaches the steps of the guillotine at
Roquette. It is a miserable chamber of horrors, in which the heavy-eyed
absinthe-drinkers raise their heads to stare mistily at the visitor,
and to listen for the hundredth time to the boy's glib explanation
of each daub in the gallery around them, from the picture of the
vermilion-cheeked young woman who caused the trouble, to an imaginative
picture of Montfaucon covered with skulls, where, many years in the
past, criminals swung in chains.
The café of Père Lunette is just around several sharp corners from the
Château Rouge. It was originally presided over by an old gentleman who
wore spectacles, which gave his shop its name. It is a resort of the
lowest class of women and men, and its walls are painted throughout
with faces and scenes a little better in execution than those in the
Château Rouge, and a little worse in subject. It is a very small
place to enjoy so wide-spread a reputation, and its front room is
uninteresting, save for a row of casks resting on their sides, on the
head of each of which is painted the portrait of some noted Parisian,
like Zola, Eiffel, or Boulanger. The young proprietor fell upon us as
his natural prey the night we visited the place, and drove us before
him into a room in the rear of the wineshop. He was followed as a
matter of course by a dozen men in blouses, and as many bareheaded
women, who placed themselves expectantly at the deal tables, and
signified what it was they wished to drink before going through the
form of asking us if we meant to pay for it. They were as ready to do
their part of the entertainment as the actors of the theatre are ready
to go on when the curtain rises, and there was nothing about any of
them to suggest that he or she was there for any other reason than
the hope of a windfall in the person of a stranger who would supply
him or her with money or liquor. A long-haired boy with a three days'
growth of hair upon his chin, of whom the proprietor spoke proudly as a
poet, recited in verse a long descriptive story of what the pictures
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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