by Luc Sante
“by turns a pickpocket”: Ibid., p. 78.
“Generally that sort”: Chevalier, Montmartre, pp. 251–52.
“He doesn’t eat every day”: Hugo, Les misérables, pp. 591–92.
“Little hands wanted”: Cain, Promenades dans Paris, p. 33.
The makers of silk flowers: Frères Bonneff, La vie tragique, p. 240.
At least until the middle: Chevalier, Classes, p. 371.
“In the eyes of Parisians”: Chevalier, Montmartre, p. 96.
“Steam rose from”: In Émile Zola, Les Rougon-Macquart (Pléiade, 1961), vol. 2, pp. 386–87.
“huts encrusted on”: Cobb, Paris and Elsewhere, p. 176.
“Colored in every hue”: Cain, Nouvelles promenades, pp. 68–71.
“No eyes … could locate”: Honoré de Balzac, La femme de trente ans, in La comédie humaine, vol. 2, p. 780.
“in the air, thousands”: J.-K. Huysmans, La Bièvre et Saint-Séverin (Brionne: Gérard Montfort, 1986 [1890/1898]), pp. 26–27.
“stinking from the exhalations”: Léon Bonneff, Aubervilliers (Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue: L’Amitié par le Livre, 1949), pp. 13–14.
“They work over rectangular”: Frères Bonneff, Les métiers qui tuent (Bibliographie Sociale, 1906), pp. 105–108.
“Restaurant kitchens are like”: Frères Bonneff, La classe ouvrière (Publications de la “Guerre Sociale,” 1910), pp. 100–101.
7. Le Business
“His pocket empty”: Bel-Ami, in Contes et Nouvelles, 1884–1890 (Robert Laffont, 1988 [1885]), vol. 2, p. 270.
“It wasn’t so much”: Francis Carco, De Montmartre au Quartier Latin (Albin Michel, 1927), p. 187.
“In the 1850s”: Theodore Zeldin, Ambition and Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979 [1973]), p. 307.
“the first thing that assaulted”: Quoted in Chevalier, Montmartre, p. 62.
“On the sidewalks”: Émile Zola, Nana, in Les Rougon-Macquart, vol. 2, p. 1312.
“For almost twenty minutes”: Émile Zola, Paris (Bibliothèque Charpentier, 1898), pp. 284–85.
“every skin disease”: Marius Boisson, Coins et recoins de Paris (Éditions Bossard, 1927), p. 93.
“which the proprietor”: Zola, Nana, p. 1122.
“A hundred meters”: Ibid., pp. 1312–13.
“as tall and beautiful”: Ibid., p. 1269.
“a party girl”: Ibid., p. 1253.
“I have made a pact”: Comte de Lautréamont, Les chants de Maldoror, in Oeuvres complètes (Au Sans Pareil, 1927), p. 67.
“I’ve often wondered”: Maxime du Camp, Salon de 1861, quoted by Clark, The Painting of Modern Life, p. 113.
“We find in the”: Flévy d’Urville, Les ordures de Paris, quoted by Clark, The Painting of Modern Life, p. 105.
“But certain connoisseurs”: Chevalier, Montmartre, p. 243.
the physical and mental deterioration: In the Land of Pain, edited and translated by Julian Barnes (London: Jonathan Cape, 2002).
“hang out on a corner”: Gustave Geffroy, L’apprentie (1904), quoted in Chevalier, Montmartre, p. 205.
A reporter in the 1930s: Le Crapouillot, May 1939, pp. 12–13.
Chevalier relates a fait-divers: Chevalier, Montmartre, p. 251.
A 1930 study alleged: Henri Drouin, La Vénus des Carrefours (Gallimard, 1930), passim.
An American writer: Sam Boal, “The Pros of Paris,” in Fille de Joie (New York: Grove Press, 1967), pp. 342–54.
Of the twelve such houses: Le Crapouillot, May 1939, pp. 4–7.
“All day long”: Quoted in Chevalier, Montmartre, pp. 255–56n.
A police raid: Ibid., p. 257n.
One-Two-Two: Véronique Willemin, La mondaine: Histoire et archives de la police des moeurs (Hoëbeke, 2009), p. 97.
“the collapsed foundation”: Quoted in Ibid., p. 119.
“It’s worse than”: Bruno Fuligni, ed., Dans les archives secrètes de la police (L’Iconoclaste, 2009), p. 512.
“restaurant porters, hotel”: Laurent Tailhade, Les reflêts de Paris, 1918–1919 (Coeuvres-et-Valsery: Ressouvenances, 1997), p. 79.
But the facilities: Cited in Chevalier, Montmartre, p. 239n.
The police inspector noted: Fuligni, ed., Dans les archives, pp. 551–54.
In Pigalle there were: Ibid., p. 555.
“Sailors wearing sashes”: In Carco, Romans, p. 950.
“On Rue de Lappe”: Cited in Claude Dubois, La Bastoche (Perrin, 2007 [1997]), p. 210.
“every type came”: Brassaï, The Secret Paris of the 30s, translated by Richard Miller (New York: Pantheon, 1976), unpaginated.
“once in a while”: Ibid.
8. Saint Monday
“a smoky, dark, low”: Privat d’Anglemont, Paris anecdote, p. 252.
Fights were frequent: Gérard de Nerval, “Les Nuits d’Octobre,” in Le rêve et la vie (Calmann-Lévy, 1895), p. 348.
“Their life is one”: Privat d’Anglemont, Paris anecdote, p. 168.
“Our generation … is bored”: Ibid., p. 192.
“the toxic powers”: Anon., Annales d’hygiène publique, quoted in Chevalier, Montmartre, p. 277n.
“Michelet said that you”: Descaves, Philémon vieux de la vieille, p. 56.
The Bonneff brothers: Marchands de folie (Marcel Rivière, 1912), passim.
“a notorious bistro”: Cain, Promenades, pp. 305–308.
“Dirty, stinking Rue des Anglais”: Ibid., pp. 88–93.
“a meeting place for”: Huysmans, La Bièvre, p. 148.
“In Paris there are”: Richard Harding Davis, “The Show-Places of Paris,” in Americans in Paris, pp. 174, 177.
“In 1925, many”: Follain, Paris, pp. 85–86.
The Bonneffs explain: Frères Bonneff, Marchands de folie, pp. 76–77.
“All night long”: Quoted in Chevalier, Montmartre, p. 234.
“cafés for unemployed”: Fargue, Le piéton de Paris, p. 40.
“when the night … le père la Tulipe”: Cobb, Paris and Elsewhere, p. 182.
“it’s easy to become”: Robert Giraud, Le vin des rues (Denoël, 1983 [1955]), p. 36.
“All those hideouts”: Clébert, Paris insolite, pp. 125–26.
“a sleeping clochard”: Giraud, Le vin des rues, p. 36.
“descended in a direct line”: Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, pp. 32–33.
“… vagabonds, discharged soldiers”: Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International Publishers, 1963), p. 75.
“crusade against beauty”: Privat d’Anglemont, Paris anecdote, p. 143.
“A great anxiety haunted them”: Ibid., p. 146.
“clocks in the shape”: Anatole Jakovsky, Paris mes puces (Les Quatre Jeudis, 1957), p. 188.
Enid Starkie maintained: Starkie, Petrus Borel the Lycanthrope, p. 89.
Most famously, he had a pet lobster: Scott Horton, “Nerval: A Man and His Lobster,” Harper’s, October 12, 2008.
“Like [Louis-Sébastien] Mercier”: Preface to Privat d’Anglemont, Paris inconnu, p. 9.
After Privat’s death: Willy Alante-Lima, Alexandre Privat d’Anglemont: Le funambule (Éditions du Parc, 2011), p. 35.
“Yes, our literature”: Quoted in Chevalier, Classes, p. 68n.
“Upon one panel”: Davis, “The Show-Places of Paris,” p. 180.
“The Chat Noir”: Daniel Halévy, “Pays parisiens,” La Revue Hebdomadaire, May 1929, p. 36.
“Blond, laughing Pierrot”: Roland Dorgelès, Bouquet de bohème (Albin Michel, 1947), p. 61.
“You could do everything”: Blaise Cendrars, Trop c’est trop (Denoël, 1957), pp. 27–28.
“Paris was a city”: Debord, In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni, pp. 222, 227–29, 235.
9. Show People
“Fashionable people go”: Cited in Chevalier, Montmartre, p. 61.
“He’s a loafer”: Honoré de Balzac, La Cousine Bette, in La comédie humaine (Pléiade), vol. 6, p. 456.
“pale, slender, in colorless�
��: Cited in Pierre Gascar, Le Boulevard du Crime (Atelier Hachette/Masson, 1980), p. 156.
“covered them from”: Victor Hugo, Choses vues (Nelson, n.d. [1887]), pp. 345–46.
“The whores and hoodlums”: Carco, Jésus-la-Caille, pp. 29–30.
“Before 1848”: Victor Rozier, Les bals publics de Paris (1855), cited in Chevalier, Montmartre, p. 98n.
“the most incredible jumble”: Privat d’Anglemont, Paris anecdote, p. 219.
“she was burned”: André Warnod, Les bals de Paris (G. Crès, 1922), p. 60.
From inhabiting the hôtel: Janet Flanner, Paris Was Yesterday, 1925–1939 (New York: Popular Library, 1972), pp. 49–50.
“persuaded of their superiority”: Warnod, Les bals de Paris, pp. 95, 97.
“where the dances were nothing”: Ibid., p. 133.
The area around the Contrescarpe: Ibid., p. 151.
“to the musette”: Émile de la Bédollière, Les industriels (1842), cited in Chevalier, Classes, p. 494.
“where the accordion”: Dubois, La Bastoche, p. 142.
“It’s free to enter”: Warnod, Les bals de Paris, pp. 89–90.
The java seems: Dubois, La Bastoche, p. 173.
It was at La Java: Ibid., pp. 343–44.
“It’s nothing but a banal”: Ibid., p. 306.
“To live at home”: Alfred Delvau, Les plaisirs de Paris (1867), cited in Clark, The Painting of Modern Life, p. 304n.
“The audience is divided”: J.-K. Huysmans, “Autour des fortifications,” in Revue Illustrée, December 1885, p. 58.
“an agreement to listen”: Clark, The Painting of Modern Life, p. 212.
“A big circular room”: Cited in François Caradec and Alain Weill, Le café-concert (Atelier Hachette/Massin, 1980), p. 42.
“After every revolution”: Ibid., pp. 63–64.
“‘The other day’”: Cited in Chevalier, Montmartre, pp. 130–31.
“Every third number”: Davis, The Show-Places of Paris, p. 179.
“a stallholder at”: Cited in Éric Rémy, liner notes to Fréhel, 1930–1939 (Frémeaux et Associés).
“One afternoon in 1938”: Cited in Nicole and Alain Lacombe, Fréhel (Pierre Belfond, 1990), p. 301.
“She scared me”: Cited in Chevalier, Montmartre, p. 353.
“She was ephemeral”: Flanner, Paris Was Yesterday, p. 67.
“Her face and arms”: Francesco Rapazzini, Damia: Une diva française (Perrin, 2010), p. 147.
“I’ll tell you what”: Simone Berteaut, Piaf (Robert Laffont, 1969), p. 152.
“The subject of”: Cited in Éric Rémy, liner notes to Édith Piaf, 1935–1947 (Frémeaux et Associés).
10. Mort aux Vaches
“On the whole”: Chevalier, Classes, p. 119.
“Those who have”: Guillaume-Tell Doin and Édouard Charton, Lettres sur Paris (1830), cited in ibid., pp. 278–79.
“There are no”: George Sand, Le diable à Paris, cited in ibid., p. 122.
“In Paris there are”: Ferragus, in Balzac, La comédie humaine (Pléiade), vol. 5, p. 17.
“a sort of drain”: Taxil Delort, Les rues de Paris, p. 72.
“In the summer the gardens”: Le Matin, September 28, 1907, cited in Cain, Nouvelles promenades, p. 160.
“it is not so much”: Chevalier, Classes, p. 500.
“the greatest number”: Chevalier, Montmartre, p. 195.
“most of the dives”: Georges Cain, Le long des rues (Flammarion, 1913), p. 80.
“thieves are a separate”: Honoré de Balzac, Code des gens honnêtes (J.-N. Barba, 1825), pp. ii, xvii.
“One day I saw”: Jules Janin, L’âne mort et la femme guillotinée, cited in Chevalier, Classes, p. 125.
“A man uses”: Chevalier, Montmartre, p. 298.
“The Hearts of Steel?”: Ibid., p. 286
“By 1925 the hard”: Foreword to L’homme traqué, in Carco, Romans, p. 575.
“the Prix Goncourt”: Cited in René Fallet, Carnets de jeunesse, vol. 2 (Denoël, 1992), p. 273.
“I sat on”: [Hippolyte Bonnelier and Jacques Arago], Lacenaire après sa condamnation (Marchant, 1836), p. 11.
“an illustration of”: André Breton, “Projet pour la bibliothèque de Jacques Doucet,” in Oeuvres complètes, edited by Marguerite Bonnet (Pléiade, 1988), vol. 1, p. 634.
“the simplest Surrealist”: “Second manifeste du surréalisme,” in ibid., pp. 782–83.
a law clerk in Tours: Jacques Simonelli, introduction to Lacenaire, Mémoires (José Corti, 1991), pp. 14–15.
“the Dreyfus Affair”: “Un sans patrie,” “Liabeuf … & Caserio,” La Guerre Sociale, June 29, 1910.
“a lesson in energy”: Gustave Hervé, “L’exemple de l’apache,” La Guerre Sociale, January 12, 1910.
“Excited couples came straight”: Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, pp. 37–38.
“I have chosen”: Jacques Mesrine, L’instinct de mort (Flammarion, 2008 [1977]), p. 468.
“It would be less evil”: Cited by Noël Arnaud in Guide de Paris mystérieux (Tchou, 1976), p. 379.
“one the antechamber”: Delvau, Les plaisirs de Paris, p. 174.
“Take a murder”: Roland Barthes, “Structure du fait-divers,” in Essais critiques (Seuil, 1964), p. 190.
11. Insurgents
“join, as no other”: Friedrich Engels, Travel Journal, Paris to Bern, October–November 1848, cited in Chevalier, Montmartre, p. 129.
“Paris is a counterpart”: Benjamin, The Arcades Project, p. 83.
“In Paris under”: Preface to Histoire des treize, in Balzac, La comédie humaine (Pléiade), vol. 5, p. 11.
“the 4,054 barricades”: Exhibition catalog to Le romantisme, Bibliothèque Nationale, 1930, cited in Benjamin, The Arcades Project, p. 139.
“Fewer were felled”: Friedrich von Reumer, Briefe aus Paris (1831), cited in Benjamin, The Arcades Project, p. 138.
“In less than an hour”: Hugo, Les misérables, p. 1089.
“The Saint-Antoine barricade”: Ibid., p. 1195.
“young, beautiful, wild-haired”: Hugo, Choses vues (augmented edition; Arvansa, n.d.), p. 120.
Among other things, he: Auguste Blanqui, Instructions pour une prise d’armes (Cent Pages/Cosaques, 2009 [1866]), p. 48.
“perfectly constructed”; Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, Histoire de la Commune de 1871 (La Découverte, 2000 [1896]), p. 324.
“The statues were made”: Louise Michel, La Commune, histoire et souvenirs (La Découverte, 1999 [1898]), pp. 301–302.
“Outside the insurgent neighborhoods”: Hugo, Les misérables, pp. 1092–93.
“Pustules had swarmed”: Zola, Nana, p. 1485.
“It was a paste”: Victorine B., Souvenirs d’une morte vivante (François Maspéro, 1976 [1909]), p. 114.
“the central committee”: Pierre Vésinier, Comment a péri la Commune (1892), cited in Maurice Choury, ed., 1871: Les damnés de la terre (Tchou, 1969), p. 78.
“Enough of militarism!”: Lissagaray, Histoire de la Commune, pp. 315–16.
“When the minister”: Ibid., p. 316.
“Fortune is capricious”: Ibid., p. 405.
“the flag of the Commune”: “Rapport de la commission des élections,” in Journal officiel de la Commune de Paris, March 31, 1871, p. 207.
“he would rather have seen”: Lissagaray, Histoire de la Commune, p. 253.
“Having seen the”: Victor Hugo, Oeuvres posthumes: Toute la lyre (Hetzel, 1897), p. 77.
“Later on, they’ll be”: André Léo, La femme et les moeurs (Tusson: Le Lérot, 1990 [1869]), p. 109.
“Once more, women have”: André Léo, “La révolution sans la femme,” in La Sociale, May 8, 1871.
“We will say nothing”: Cited in Descaves, Philémon vieux de la vieille, p. 84.
“Above all, don’t shut”: Blanqui, Instructions pour une prise, p. 30.
“and their understandable emotions”: Descaves, Philémon vieux de la vieille, p. 255.
“They were insane�
�: Cited in Chevalier, Montmartre, p. 112.
“the exhibition and sale”: Gronfier, Dictionnaire de la racaille, pp. 93–94.
“When your feet danced”: Arthur Rimbaud, Oeuvres complètes (Pléiade, 1972), pp. 48–49.
“the Commune will stand”: Descaves, Philémon vieux de la vieille, p. 158.
“The right to live”: Alexandre Marius Jacob, Les travailleurs de la nuit (L’Insomniaque, 1999), pp. 10–11.
“I decide whether”: Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own, translated by Steven T. Byington (Sun City, CA: Western World Press, 1982 [1845]), p. 190.
“The common point”: Sébastien Faure, Encyclopédie anarchiste (1934), cited in Jean Maitron, Ravachol et les anarchistes (Gallimard, 1964), p. 7.
“Ravachol doesn’t scare me”: Quoted in André Salmon, La terreur noire (Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1959), p. 204.
“I don’t care about”: Maitron, Ravachol et les anarchistes, p. 201.
“We sold them only”: Flor O’Squarr, Les coulisses de l’anarchie (Nuits Rouges, 2000 [1892]), p. 213.
“You don’t have”: Ibid., p. 87.
“A true anarchist”: Maitron, Ravachol et les anarchistes, p. 221.
“a mortal enemy”: Quoted in ibid., p. 227.
“We’re with him provisionally”: Descaves, Philémon vieux de la vieille, p. 295.
“you found every sort”: Victor Méric, Les bandits tragiques (Simon Kra, 1926), p. 141.
“The autonomous social cell”: André Lorulot, Chez les loups: Moeurs anarchistes (Conflans-[Sainte]-Honorine: Éditions de l’Idée Libre, 1922), pp. 41–42.
“Cohabitation—that’s our”: Ibid., p. 27.
IDLERS, CROOKS, DRUNKS: Méric, Les bandits, p. 109.
“The newspapers are full”: Léon Bloy, Le pélerin de l’absolu, 1910–1912 (Mercure de France, 1914), pp. 267–68.
“I would so much”: Léo Malet, La vie est dégueulasse, in Trilogie noire (Éric Losfeld, 1969), pp. 147, 148, 150.
“because I will never”: Émile Michon, Un peu de l’âme des bandits (Dorbon-Ainé, 1914), p. 104.
“They seem to want”: Ibid., pp. 208–209.
“Farewell to you all”: Léon Daudet, Paris vécu, 2e série: Rive Gauche (Gallimard, 1930), p. 247.
“priests and apostles”: Méric, Les bandits, p. 205.
12. The Game
“A strange delusion”: Paul Lafargue, Le droit à la paresse (Henry Oriol, 1883), p. 8.