- Not without blasting; and trying to open a window in the
ordinary first or second class carriage provides healthful exercise
for an American tourist, while affording a cheap and simple form
of amusement for his fellow passengers. If, by superhuman efforts
and at the cost of a fingernail or two, he should get one open,
somebody else in the compartment as a matter of principle, immediately
objects; and the retired brigadier-general, who is always in charge
of a German train, comes and seals it up again, for that is the
rule and the law; and then the natives are satisfied and sit in
sweet content together, breathing a line of second-handed air that
would choke a salamander.
Once, a good many years ago - in the century before the last I think
it was - a member of the Teutonic racial stock was accidentally
caught out in the fresh air and some of it got into his lungs.
And, being a strange and a foreign influence to which the lungs
were unused, it sickened him; in fact I am not sure but that it
killed him on the spot. So the emperors of Germany and Austria
got together and issued a joint ukase on the subject and, so far
as the traveling public was concerned, forever abolished those
dangerous experiments. Over there they think a draft is deadly,
and I presume it is if you have never tampered with one. They
have a saying: A little window is a dangerous thing.
As with fresh air on the Continent, so also with baths - except
perhaps more so. In deference to the strange and unaccountable
desires of their English-speaking guests the larger hotels in Paris
are abundantly equipped with bathrooms now, but the Parisian
boulevardiers continue to look with darkling suspicion on a party
who will deliberately immerse his person in cold water; their
beings seem to recoil in horror from the bare prospect of such a
thing. It is plainly to be seen they think his intelligence has
been attainted by cold water externally applied; they fear that
through a complete undermining of his reason he may next be
committing these acts of violence on innocent bystanders rather
than on himself, as in the present distressing stages of his mania.
Especially, I would say, is this the attitude of the habitue of
Montmartre.
I can offer no visual proof to back my word; but by other testimony
I venture the assertion that when a boulevardier feels the need
of a bath he hangs a musk bag round his neck - and then, as the
saying is, the warmer the sweeter. His companion of the gentler
sex apparently has the same idea of performing daily ablutions
that a tabby cat has. You recall the tabby-cat system, do you
not? - two swipes over the brow with the moistened paw, one forward
swipe over each ear, a kind of circular rubbing effect across the
face - and call it a day! Drowning must be the most frightful death
that a Parisian sidewalk favorite can die. It is not so much the
death itself - it is the attendant circumstances.
Across the river, in the older quarters of Paris, there is excitement
when anybody on the block takes a bath - not so much excitement as
for a fire, perhaps, but more than for a funeral. On the eve of
the fatal day the news spreads through the district that to-morrow
poor Jacques is going to take a bath! A further reprieve has been
denied him. He cannot put it off for another month, or even for
another two weeks. His doom is nigh at hand; there is no
hope - none!
Kindly old Angeline, the midwife, shakes her head sadly as she
goes about her simple duties.
On the morrow the condemned man rises early and sees his spiritual
adviser. He eats a hearty breakfast, takes an affectionate leave
of his family and says he is prepared for the worst. At the
appointed hour the tumbrel enters the street, driven by the paid
executioner - a descendant of the original Sanson - and bearing the
dread instrument of punishment, a large oblong tin tub.
The rumble of the heavy wheels over the cobbles seems to wake an
agonized chord in every bosom. To-day this dread visitation
descends on Jacques; but who can tell - so the neighbors say to
themselves - when the same fate may strike some other household now
happily unconscious! All along the narrow way sorrow-drooped heads
protrude in rows; from every casement dangle whiskers, lank and
stringy with sympathy - for in this section every true Frenchman
has whiskers, and if by chance he has not his wife has; so that
there are whiskers for all.
From the window of the doomed wretch's apartments a derrick
protrudes - a crossarm with a pulley and a rope attached. It bears
a grimly significant resemblance to a gallows tree. Under the
direction of the presiding functionary the tub is made fast to the
tackle and hoisted upward as pianos and safes are hoisted in
American cities. It halts at the open casement. It vanishes
within. The whole place resounds with low murmurs of horror and
commiseration.
Ah, the poor Jacques - how he must suffer! Hark to that low, sickening
thud! 'Tis the accursed soap dropping from his nerveless grasp.
Hist to that sound - like unto a death rattle! It is the water
gurgling in the tub. And what means that low, poignant, smothered
gasp? It is the last convulsive cry of Jacques descending into the
depths. All is over! Let us pray!
The tub, emptied but stained, is lowered to the waiting cart. The
executioner kisses the citizen who has held his horse for him
during his absence and departs; the whole district still hums with
ill-suppressed excitement.
