The number of carts that we now encountered converging from many quarters warned us that we were very near the markets. Then rose the subdued noise that night-workers make. There seemed to be no end of the laden carts. The great Halles then came into view, with their cold glare of electric lights, and thousands of people moving about with baskets upon their backs, unloading the vegetable carts and piling the contents along the streets. The thoroughfares were literally walled and fortressed with carrots, cabbages, pumpkins, and the like, piled in neat rows as high as our heads for square after square. Is it possible for Paris to consume all of this in a day? Every few yards were fat women seated before steaming cans of hot potage and _café_ noir, with rows of generous white bowls, which they would fill for a sou. Not alone were the market workers here, for it seemed as though the Boul' Mich' had merely taken an adjournment after the law had closed its portals and turned it out of doors. The workers were silent and busy, but largely interspersed among them were the demi-mondaines and the singing and dancing students of the Quartier, all as full of life and deviltry as ever. It was with these tireless revellers that the soup- and coffee-women did their most thriving business, for fun brings a good appetite, and the soup and coffee were good; but better still was this unconventional, lawless, defiant way of taking them. Mr. Pugson's spirits regained their vivacity under the spell, and he was so enthusiastic that he wanted to buy out one of the pleasant-faced fat women; we had to drag him bodily away to avert the catastrophe. In the side streets leading away from the markets are _café_s and restaurants almost without number, and they are open toute la nuit, to accommodate the market people, having a special permit to do so; but as they are open to all, the revellers from all parts of Paris assemble there after they have been turned out of the boulevard _café_s at two o'clock. It is not an uncommon thing early of a Sunday morning to see crowds of merry-makers from a bal masqué finishing the night here, all in costume, dancing and playing ring-around-a-rosy among the stacks of vegetables and the unheeding market people. Indeed, it is quite a common thing to end one's night's frivolity at the Halles and their _café_s, and take the first 'buses home in the early morning. The contingent from the Boul' Mich', after assisting the market people to unload, and indulging in all sorts of pranks, invaded the élite _café_s, among them the _Café Barrette, Au Veau Qui Tête, Au Chien Qui Fume, and Le Caveau du Cercle._ [Illustration: 0149]