1936 On the Continent

roughly, is the practical geography of Paris from the foreigner’s viewpoint. In fact, 90 per cent. of all the foreigners in Paris will be found in the five centres mentioned here. The rest of Paris is the realm of the natives.
    If you wish to know something about these other parts of Paris, then the best thing to do is to spread out a map of the city on the table and travel round the centre in a clockwise direction.
The “Chinese Wall”
    Start on the eastern side, that is, to the right of the city, at the eastern extension of the great boulevards. Here, from north to south, runs the Boulevard de Strasbourg and its extension, the Boulevard de Sebastopol, dead straight like a wall, and this is in fact the Chinese Wall that separates fashionable Paris from the poorer districts. Here, in the extreme north-east, you will find the pronouncedly proletarian districts of La Villette, Belleville and Menilmontant, the Whitechapel of Paris, yet very different in character from London’s East End. The difference lies in the southern, Mediterranean tinge of Paris which we have already mentioned and which endows even the worst misery with a remarkable, shimmering picturesqueness that is strongly reminiscent of Italy. A walk through this district is eminently worth while, and in many respects far more edifying than lounging perpetually at Weber’s or at the Dome. But you must not keep to the great outer boulevards; stroll aimlessly through the small streets and alleys, particularly where they go uphill. On the other hand, you may safely omit to visit the Père Lachaise, which is also in this district. You will know more about the great men who are buried here if you read their works, or about their deeds, than if you inspect the memorials that mark their graves. One gravestone is like another.
    The wide strip between the outer boulevards (Boul. de la Villette, Boul. de Belleville, etc.) and the Republique-Bastille line is rather colourless and tedious. On the other hand, the districts between Republique-Bastille and Republique Boulevard de Sebastopol (third and fourth
arrondissement
) are most lively and colourful. There is, for instance, the modern ghetto round the Rue de Templewith its indescribable misery—all anti-Semites who think that the name Jew and financial power are synonyms ought to be taken for a walk here. Then there is the district round the Bastille, one of the oldest in Paris; and finally the Ile St. Louis, a magic sleeping-beauty island in the heart of the Metropolis, a visit to which at dusk has already been recommended in the first chapter.
The Cité
    Near by is the Cité, the cradle of Paris (since this was the site of the Roman city of Civitas), one of the chief attractions for foreign tourists, with the Notre Dame, the Palais de Justice (and also the Prefecture of Police, with its boring manipulations of residential permits). We will give these a miss, in common with all the typical “sights” which the tourist may look up in an ordinary guide—our object is to describe the less known, less familiar features, of the city.
    For the same reason we will not pause in the adjacent world-famous fifth
arrondissement
, the Quartier Latin and its environment, the magnificent edifices of the Pantheon, Sorbonne, Luxembourg Palace, etc., and will rather take an aimless stroll in the fantastic labyrinth round the Rue de Mouffetard and the Place de la Contrescarpe, in the small streets east of the Place Saint Michel and
behind
the Pantheon, that picturesque jungle of medieval Paris. That is the district of the
real
students, the real garret and Grub Street romance, far more so than the famous Boul. St. Michel itself. Those who sit about here in the big cafés, at the Capoulade, Dupont-Latin and Source, represent the dandyhood of the university with their excessively self-conscious, sham Bohemian manner, their noisy, somewhat arrogant behaviour, their boulevard girls and stuffed shoulders. Do not let them bluff you. They are not the real denizens of Grub Street. The real down-at-heel intellectuals sit in the lecture rooms or in the small
bistrots
, or walk, absorbed in highbrow talk, in the remoter parts of the Luxembourg Garden. They have no money for the sham grisettes of the Capoulade—there are prostitutes in the Quartier Latin who
pretend
to be students or the mistresses of students—and they look for sweetheartsamong the daughters of the concierges or among the assistants of the cleaning and dyeing