CHAPTER XXIII

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THE MONT-DE-PIÉTÉ.

“Uncle” and “Aunt”--Organisation of the Mont-de-Piété--Its Various Branches--Its Warehouses and Sale-rooms.

French idioms, and particularly slang ones, are seldom translatable into English. The cant Parisian word, however, for a pawnbroker bears quite a comic resemblance to the word employed in London. The medical student of our metropolis, when he is at low water, takes his watch to his “uncle.” The medical student of Paris resorts, under like circumstances, to his “aunt.” Neither would think of employing the dignified historical word used by the student of Brussels, who, as if mindful of the pawnbroker’s origin, calls him “the Lombard.”

The English student speaks of the unfortunate watch in question as being “up the spout”; the Parisian declares that his is “on the nail”--the idea apparently being that the chronometer is “hung up” until more prosperous days.

The great pawnbroking establishment, or Mont-de-Piété, of Paris, is situated in the Rue des Blancs Manteaux, with a principal branch office in the Rue Bonaparte; but it may be interesting meanwhile to glance at those minor establishments which are scattered over the whole of the French capital. Like their counterparts in London, they excite in the philosophic beholder a melancholy curiosity, above all in the poorer quarters, where dire necessity compels the levying of those loans which, in more fashionable parts, are the result of an extravagant life.

The Paris pawnshop has the aspect of quite an ordinary house, and nothing would particularly attract to it the attention of an observer--not even the incessant stream of its visitors in and out--were it not that these wear a suspiciously stealthy air as they enter or quit the place; a sort of shame on their arrival and an uneasy haste at their departure.

It is not, as a rule, necessary for the student of human life, who wishes to see what occurs within a Paris pawnshop, to pledge or redeem anything himself; the crowd is so large that the absence of his parcel will be unperceived, and everyone is so intent on his or her own errand that not a glance, probably, will be bestowed upon him. “How much will you lend me on this?”--such is the absorbing thought, the sole preoccupation, which deprives the visitors of all curiosity concerning what is around them.

[Illustration: THE OPERA HOUSE.]

Entering one of these loan offices, a peculiar odour--which a French writer with a delicate nose has described as something between the smell of a barrack and that of a hospital--gives the visitor his first impression of the place. Scrupulously clean as the depôt is kept, the air is to some extent affected by the malodorous parcels brought in by the customers. Even the frequent opening of the doors scarcely relieves the atmosphere, which is characterised by that most unbearable of all atmospheric qualities--stuffiness. But the heroic student of life, bent on observation, fortifies his nose by the aid of philosophy; and instead of betaking himself to flight, sits down on one of the benches ranged round the room and affects to await his turn. This room is divided into two by a partition fitted with doors, one part accommodating the public, the other being reserved for the employés. The public compartment is generally very sombre, with no other light than that which steals through chance apertures: the shopmen’s compartment is thoroughly illuminated. The sun has been accused by a French writer of flinging his beams into these pawnshops in order to reveal some of the most lamentable scenes and acts of human life. But, on the other hand, the assistants require a good light to examine the miscellaneous articles submitted to their appraisement.

One curious feature is the silence which reigns in these establishments. The customers seem to have no tongues, and the money-lenders, by no means prodigal of words, communicate with their clients chiefly by looks and gestures. After all, there is little need for conversation, the business of every visitor being ostensible, and the employés having simply to say that they will lend such and such a sum on the article proposed, or--what sickens the heart of some poor wretches who wish to raise the price of a loaf of bread or a bundle of firewood--that they will lend nothing on a worthless rag.

[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE MONT-DE-PIÉTÉ, CHAUSSÉE D’ANTIN.]

To some extent the pawnbroking assistant may be said to control the destinies of the impecunious public. If he refuses to lend on this article or that, some merchant will be unable to redeem his honour and his promissory note, some lover will be unable to keep his appointment with the girl of his heart, some comedian will not make his début, some lady of fashion will not give her soirée, and some needy mother will have to send her family supperless to bed. Here behind this partition there is no distinction of class. The highest and the lowest ranks of Parisian society are brought together--a duchess by the side of a flower-girl, an artist by the side of an artisan. Pride and humility are here united. Aristocrats, whose souls revolt at the thought of borrowing, are dragged to the place by necessity, and have to wait, like the rest, till the assistant is at leisure to inspect their rings and their diamonds, their silks and their satins.

“For anyone who knows how to observe and divine,” says M. Alfred Delvau, “the public of a loan office is very interesting. You enter mentally into the existences of all those widely different characters, dragged here by such opposite causes, and you leave the place smiling sometimes, but sad nearly always. Misery--even smiling misery--has nothing of gaiety; and it is Misery, or her shame-faced sister Want, who drives hither that crowd of people differing so greatly from one another by their costume, age, sex, and position.

“First of all, with his elbows resting on the counter, facing the commissionaire--sworn appraiser of all those rubbish heaps which the owners wish to turn into gold--lounges a fellow who turns his back on us and lets us see, beneath his frayed trouser-ends, a pair of naked feet enclosed in down-at-heel shoes. He comes to pledge his mattress--the last, the supreme resource!--that mattress which seems to have lost half its stuffing; or some workman’s tools, which do not look sorry to rest a little. By his side, and by way of contrast, stands, with brazen air, a big red-faced woman, red-haired, red-shawled, with a mauve silk dress and ruffles of white lace, whom I sometimes meet on the footway of the Rue des Martyrs, and who personifies a certain category of women--the last category. What does she come to pledge?--her heart? That has long since wandered away. Her virtue? That has followed her heart. Her wit? She never had any. What then? Some jewel, without doubt--the last witness of a last _liaison_. Her ear is at this moment bereft of the twenty-five francs’ worth of gold which hung in it just now.

“On the wooden bench let into the wall are other persons: two women of the lower orders, who are estimating beforehand the borrowing value of the linen they are going to pledge, while the little daughter of one of them is heedlessly gnawing an apple; a young girl in black, her head bare, like that of the red woman who has just gone, but more decently and poorly clad; an Arthur of the Reine Blanche--his hat tilted over his ear, his hands in his pockets, and looking at the small dog playing at his feet, rather than look at nothing; then men and women of the inferior classes with their children, talking about the hard times and the high rents; then placid citizens; then careworn flower-girls; then other people more or less interesting--but always interested. The man who pledges his mattress, the woman who pledges her linen, the sempstress who pledges her dress, feel no doubt a sharp pang in taking leave of objects so indispensable; but that is as nothing compared with the poignant anguish of the man who, for food, or the woman who, to feed her child, is obliged to part with love tokens or family jewels, as sacred as the vases of a church: the ancestral watch which has marked so many hours of joy and pain; the locket enclosing that lock of hair; the bracelet of that dead mistress who will never die in the heart of him she has left for ever; the ring given by that lover who still lives but who is for ever dead to the woman he has deserted.

“It is the physiognomy of the borrowers that I have just been sketching, of those wretches of all ranks, who are forced by some dire necessity, whether accidental or normal, to come and pledge their clothes or their jewels; to exhaust--in order not to die of hunger or to meet an overdue debt--the resources which are still at their disposal. Yet, by the side of these careworn, despairing faces, inscribed with poignant melancholy, or, in some cases, resignation, are the radiant faces of those who have come to redeem their jewels and their clothes. These are not silent like the rest. They do not glide in, like furtive shadows amongst other shadows. You hear them coming before you see them: they ascend the steps with tremendous haste. It is a question of arriving before the shop is closed, for it is Saturday, the morrow is Sunday, and they have come up panting like a pair of forge-bellows.

“There is a run of business on Saturday night, and the assistants behind the counter, although they, too, love Sunday with the repose it brings, almost dread it as being preceded by such a rush of work. And these people who come to redeem are not so easy to manage as the poor wretches who pledge, the latter being mild and patient, full of anguish though they are; the former noisy, exacting, and sometimes insolent. The relationship is changed, in fact. One set come to demand something, almost an act of charity--for that is the nature of the request, although the pledge is worth more than the loan granted. The other set come to make what is almost a gift; for the pledge they withdraw is not always worth the price that has been estimated, and if they did not withdraw it the commissionaire would perhaps lose something on it, instead of gaining. You see the difference. And then, again, it is usually men who pledge and women who redeem. In pledging, a signature is required; a certificate alone suffices for the redemption. I leave you to imagine the behaviour of those gossips, proud of “unhooking” from the accursed “nail” the dress or the jacket which has hung there six months, and which is now as indispensable for going to the dance or the promenade as it was useless six months since, when it was a question of procuring a dinner or paying for a bed.”

[Illustration: THE JEWELLERY STORES, RUE DES BLANCS MANTEAUX.]

The Parisian pawnbroker, being simply a Government official, differs necessarily from the pawnbroker of London. The latter is the most independent and insolent of all shopkeepers. He makes very little distinction between those who come to pledge and those who come to redeem. If his Saturday-night customers who come to take their things out of pawn were to give themselves such airs as the Parisian pledge-redeemers already described, he would insult them to their face, and keep them waiting till they had learnt better manners. He feels indebted to no one. He does not seek regular customers, for he knows that the stream of the impecunious will never cease to flow into his shop, that if one does not come another will, and that the people who come to redeem are seriously in want of their property, and must pay him the amount of the loan and interest no matter whether he is bearish or polite.

The branch establishments, with their commissionaires, having been spoken of, let us now glance at the great Mont-de-Piété of Paris, situated in the Rue des Blancs Manteaux. This central establishment dates from the reign of Louis XVI., who founded it by letters patent in 1777. The work of money-lending was at once commenced, but not in the buildings specially constructed in the Rue des Blancs Manteaux, beside the convent of the Benedictines of Saint-Maur, since these buildings were not completed until 1786. It is interesting to follow the different phases through which this vast establishment of public utility, designed to “put an end to the abuses of usury,” has passed, until now it receives upwards of twenty-five million pledges annually. That these pledges present an inconceivably great variety of objects may well be supposed. On this subject M. Blaize, author of the “Traité des Monts-de-Piété,” has written descriptively enough as follows:--“Let us stop at the first floor. This is the quarter of the aristocracy; the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the Chaussée d’Antin of our borrowers. Here are the first and second divisions--those of the “jewels”--where the most precious objects are deposited. I open the ‘four-figure cupboards’--such is the name we give to those cupboards of iron which contain pledges on which a thousand francs or more have been advanced. Great Heaven! what riches! Sparkling sprays, strings of diamonds, trinkets calculated to turn the heads of duchesses! Silver services fit to adorn the table of a king! In these regions of want--opulent want and necessitous want--one’s eyes must not see everything nor one’s ears listen to everything: let us pass on. We take our way through the passages which are bordered on each side with wealth-laden shelves. Look at those thousands of watches, chains, bracelets, jewels of every kind; that countless mass of objects of art, of luxury, of utility, of vanity, or of coquetry.

[Illustration: IN THE RUE CAPRON BRANCH OF THE MONT-DE-PIÉTÉ.]

“We are now on the second floor. Here commences the ordinary goods department. The floor bends beneath the weight of the million pledges which are taken in every year. Here are ranged, in admirable order, dresses, coats, shirts, table-cloths, blankets, and indeed every object of household use or of the toilet; vestments of silks or of rags; books; tools. Let us explore the next two storeys. The same arrangements, the same symmetry: cases filled with boxes, bandboxes, and parcels. The walls of the staircases are covered with pictures, mirrors, metronomes, which have not found a place in the interior of the divisions. Let us go higher still. We are now in the doleful city, in the region of sorrow and want. Look at those piles of mattresses so highly packed. They are the very last tribute of misery, which, after being despoiled of its vestments, has given us its last pledge, and which sleeps on a heap of straw, where shiver, in a fetid attic, around an emaciated mother, children blue with cold, with wasted cheeks, hollow eyes, and a smile sad and sweet. Poor dear little creatures! In order to live, they ask for nothing but a little air and bread! Let us descend to the ground floor.

[Illustration: THE SALE-ROOM OF THE MONT-DE-PIÉTÉ, RUE DES BLANCS MANTEAUX.]

“The warehouses are used for new merchandise, such as linen, cloth, muslins, mirrors of large dimensions, bronze and copper articles, etc. Things which are too heavy to be carried above, such as vices, anvils, and cauldrons, occupy a considerable space below. Do not let us forget the fountain warehouse. At the end of the autumn the cocoa-hawkers bring us their fountains and exchange them for a sum which, small as it is, enables them to follow the little industries by which they are able to live on through the winter.... At the first sunshine of the spring they come to redeem the pledge they have left with us, and, with their little bell in their hand, gaily betake themselves once more to the Champs Élysées and the boulevards.

“Each article bears a ticket, each ticket an even number if it is a pledge, an uneven number if it is a renewal. As often as an article is renewed, a fresh ticket is sewn over that of the preceding year (you can count ten on this particular pledge--nine renewals, that is to say). The loan is only six francs--six francs! But it is a fortune to those whose work does not even suffice for the wants of the day. Listen to a simple and touching story. Some years ago one of our predecessors noticed a little packet which had upon it a whole series of renewal-tickets, and on which but three francs had been lent. He wrote to the borrower: a woman presented herself in reply. ‘Why,’ said he, ‘do you not redeem this pledge?’ ‘I am too poor,’ was the answer. ‘You attach a great value, then, to this article?’ ‘Ah, sir, it is all that remains to me of my mother.’ The director gave her back the packet, which contained an old-fashioned petticoat. The poor woman bore away this treasure of filial piety with tears of joy. Instances of this kind are by no means rare, and they prove that if indiscretion and misconduct bring some borrowers to the Mont-de-Piété, the greater number are impelled thither by causes which are highly honourable. The history of many a pledge is a lamentable page in the drama of human life, so full of nameless miseries and unknown misfortunes. The whole of the property does not return to its owners; at least six per cent. does not. What efforts are made to prevent this or that article from falling into the hands of the brokers, who will sell it for a mere trifle at the sale-rooms! On the 26th of June, 1849, a gold watch was sold which had been pledged on the 8th of January, 1817, for eighty francs. It had been renewed for the last time on the 8th of December, 1847. The borrower, who had not been able to redeem it, had successively paid 20 francs 50 centimes for the right of renewal. We made inquiries for him. He was dead. What a mystery of tenderness was implied in so long a constancy!”

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