BOULEVARD SAINT-MICHEL [Illustration: 0115] OF course the proper name for the great thoroughfare of the Quartier Latin is the Boulevard Saint-Michel, but the boulevardiers call it the Boul' Mich', just as the students call the Quatre Arts the Quat'z' Arts, because it is easier to say. The Boul' Mich' is the student's highway to relaxation. Mention of it at once recalls whirling visions of brilliant _café_s, with their clattering of saucers and glasses, the shouting of their white-aproned garçons, their hordes of gay and wicked damsels dressed in the costliest and most fashionable gowns, and a multitude of riotous students howling class songs and dancing and parading to the different _café_s as only students can. This is the head-quarters of the Bohemians of real Bohemia, whose poets haunt the dim and quaint cabarets and read their compositions to admiring friends; of flower-girls who offer you un petit bouquet, seulement dix centimes, and pin it into your button-hole before you can refuse; of Turks in picturesque native costume selling sweetmeats; of the cane man loaded down with immense sticks; of the stems a yard long; of beggars, gutter-snipes, hot-chestnut venders, ped- lers, singers, actors, students, and all manner of queer characters. [Illustration: 9116] The life of the Boul' Mich' begins at the Panthéon, where repose the remains of France's great men, and ends at the Seine, where the gray Gothic towers and the gargoyles of Notre-Dame look down disdainfully upon the giddy traffic below. The eastern side of the Boul' is lined with _café_s, cabarets, and brasseries. This is historic ground, for where now is the old Hôtel Cluny are still to be seen the ruins of Roman baths, and not a great distance hence are the partly uncovered ruins of a Roman arena, with its tiers of stone seats and its dens. The tomb of Cardinal Richelieu is in the beautiful old chapel of the Sorbonne, within sound of the wickedest _café_ in Paris, the Café d'Harcourt. [Illustration: 0117] In the immediate vicinity are to be found the quaint jumbled buildings of old Paris, but they are fast disappearing. And the Quartier abounds in the world's greatest schools and colleges of the arts and sciences. It was often our wont on Saturday evenings to saunter along the Boul', and sometimes to visit the _café_s. To Bishop particularly it was always a revelation and a delight, and he was forever studying and sketching the types that he found there. He was intimately acquainted in all the _café_s along the line, and with the mysterious rendezvous in the dark and narrow side streets. American beverages are to be had at many of the _café_s on the Boul',--a recent and very successful experiment. The idea has captured the fancy of the Parisians, so that "_Bars Américains_," which furnish cocktails and sours, are numerous in the _café_s. Imagine a Parisian serenely sucking a manhattan through a straw, and standing up at that!