The Lesser Bourgeoisie | Page 4

on Parisian manners and morals. We shall soon be
forced to live more without than within. Our sacred private life, the
freedom and liberty of home, where will they be?--reserved for those
who can muster fifty thousand francs a year! In fact, few millionaires
now allow themselves the luxury of a house to themselves, guarded by
a courtyard on a street and protected from public curiosity by a shady
garden at the back.

By levelling fortunes, that section of the Code which regulates
testamentary bequests, has produced these huge stone phalansteries, in
which thirty families are often lodged, returning a rental of a hundred
thousand francs a year. Fifty years hence we shall be able to count on
our fingers the few remaining houses which resemble that occupied, at
the moment our narrative begins, by the Thuillier family, --a really
curious house which deserves the honor of an exact description, if only
to compare the life of the bourgeoisie of former times with that of
to-day.
The situation and the aspect of this house, the frame of our present
Scene of manners and morals, has, moreover, a flavor, a perfume of the
lesser bourgeoisie, which may attract or repel attention according to the
taste of each reader.
In the first place, the Thuillier house did not belong to either Monsieur
or Madame Thuillier, but to Mademoiselle Thuillier, the sister of
Monsieur Thuillier.
This house, bought during the first six months which followed the
revolution of July by Mademoiselle Marie-Jeanne-Brigitte Thuillier, a
spinster of full age, stands about the middle of the rue Saint-
Dominique d'Enfer, to the right as you enter by the rue d'Enfer, so that
the main building occupied by Monsieur Thuillier faces south.
The progressive movement which is carrying the Parisian population to
the heights along the right bank of the Seine had long injured the sale
of property in what is called the "Latin quarter," when reasons, which
will be given when we come to treat of the character and habits of
Monsieur Thuillier, determined his sister to the purchase of real estate.
She obtained this property for the small sum of forty-six thousand
francs; certain extras amounted to six thousand more; in all, the price
paid was fifty-two thousand francs. A description of the property given
in the style of an advertisement, and the results obtained by Monsieur
Thuillier's exertions, will explain by what means so many fortunes
increased enormously after July, 1830, while so many others sank.
Toward the street the house presents a facade of rough stone covered

with plaster, cracked by weather and lined by the mason's instrument
into a semblance of blocks of cut stone. This frontage is so common in
Paris and so ugly that the city ought to offer premiums to house-
owners who would build their facades of cut-stone blocks. Seven
windows lighted the gray front of this house which was raised three
storeys, ending in a mansard roof covered with slate. The porte-
cochere, heavy and solid, showed by its workmanship and style that the
front building on the street had been erected in the days of the Empire,
to utilize a part of the courtyard of the vast old mansion, built at an
epoch when the quarter d'Enfer enjoyed a certain vogue.
On one side was the porter's lodge; on the other the staircase of the
front building. Two wings, built against the adjoining houses, had
formerly served as stables, coach-house, kitchen and offices to the rear
dwelling; but since 1830, they had been converted into warerooms. The
one on the right was let to a certain M. Metivier, jr., wholesale dealer in
paper; that on the left to a bookseller named Barbet. The offices of each
were above the warerooms; the bookseller occupying the first storey,
and the paper-dealer the second storey of the house on the street.
Metivier, jr., who was more of a commission merchant in paper than a
regular dealer, and Barbet, much more of a money lender and
discounter than a bookseller, kept these vast warerooms for the purpose
of storing,--one, his stacks of paper, bought of needy manufacturers,
the other, editions of books given as security for loans.
The shark of bookselling and the pike of paper-dealing lived on the best
of terms, and their mutual operations, exempt from the turmoil of retail
business, brought so few carriages into that tranquil courtyard that the
concierge was obliged to pull up the grass between the paving stones.
Messrs. Barbet and Metivier paid a few rare visits to their landlords,
and the punctuality with which they paid their rent classed them as
good tenants; in fact, they were looked upon as very honest men by the
Thuillier circle.
As for the third floor on the street, it was made into two apartments;
one of