QUARTIER LATINITIES (I) 



Ten milk-cans, five on each side of the doorway, 

 repel the sunshine of the Boulevard Mont Parnasse 

 from their clouded and battered sides. Half-a-dozen 

 apples are in one window, some sallow serviettes in 

 rings in the other, along with a bowl of eggs dyed 

 red as radishes, and moving selectively among them, 

 there is usually the hand and arm of the proprietor. 

 Those whose appetite can be discomfited by the 

 sight of a dirty hand will certainly seek their dinner 

 elsewhere ; but these eccentrics are not prevalent in 

 the Quartier Latin, and certainly occupy no place 

 in the calculations of the proprietor. 



Monsieur of the cremerie does not, indeed, trouble 

 himself at all with the trivialities of personal appear- 

 ance, nor, if an outsider may venture to express an 

 opinion, do his customers seem to be greatly concerned 

 on the subject. Behind his counter of a yard long 

 stands ^lonsieur, watchful as his own big grey cat, 

 and marks, with Heaven knows what allotment to 

 to-morrow's soup, those portions of the cotelettes that 

 the company have found uneatable, even while he 

 supplies outdoor customers with half-pennyworths of 

 milk, ladled out with a lavish lift of the hand that 

 suggests anything rather than the retention of the 

 last teaspoonful in the bottom of the measure. He 

 also, from the tail of his black eye, can survey the 

 rites of his female subordinates in the kitchen, a 

 privilege that will not be gi'udged to him by those 

 D 33 



