by the undulating branches of the vine, and by its miserable aspect, one would imagine it not the dwelling 
of a French citizen, at the gates of the French Capital, but the squalid lair of a savage, reared a hundred 
leagues from all examples of civilised life. The interior is void of flooring and papering, and nearly so of 1 
furniture. From a hook over the chimney-piece hangs horizontally, a flint-gun, with ponderous butt and i 
rusty barrel; here and there a few queer images hide, but do not adorn, the dilapitated walls; near this vile 
domicile, stands a shapeless shed, which serves as a stable, a cart-house ana a magazine; and near the dwelling I 
is the smallest of possible pleasure-gardens, evidently spared with regret from more profitable cultivation, | 
where, at the foot of an apricot-tree, the violet, the rose, the clematis, and the sweet bazil diffuse their j 
welcome odours. 
Let us now glance at the inmate of this undesirable dwelling-place. The animals which are considered 
the symbols of labour and industry — the beaver which builds his cabin, the ant which digs his sinuous 
granary beneath the sward, the bee which labours profitably from dawn to sunset, the woodpecker whose 
patient beak perforates the bark of the oak — are inactive beings, indolent, torpid, compared to the marsh- 
gardener. 
It is hardly two o’clock in the morning when he leaves his bed. The roots, plucked and tied in bundles | 
the evening before, are methodically arranged in the well-worn vehicle. The cultivator makes the best of j 
his way to market, and, transformed into a merchant till seven o’clock in the morning, divides his commo- 
dities among the fruiterers, market-women, and hotel-keepers of the capital. 
The method of watering adopted by the marsh-gardener, is of ingenious simplicity. The well is situated 
in the centre of the grounds, and surmounted by an axle-tree or cylinder, round which, the rope is entwined; 
a couple of old cart-wheels, placed horizontally at about four feet distance from each other, and united by j 
laths, ordinarily compose the cylinder. A living skeleton of a horse, causes the vessels attached to the rope, 
to ascend or descend alternately, according as his movements are directed to the right or the left. To obtain i 
from the poor animal this mechanical docility, they cover his eyes with a cowl — blind him, in short — that he 
may not go astray, but perform with more certainty his monotonous revolution. Alas ! it is easy to see, by 
his meagre flanks and melancholy aspect, that the starved steed is already oppressed with the presentiment 
that his present position is but the antechamber to Montfaucon and the knacker’s yard ! 
The toil of his long days and wakeful nights procures him but a scanty remuneration. In vain he 
practises economy to the verge of avarice ; in vain he sells his miserable horse at the approach of winter, to 
buy another in the spring ; in vain he lives upon vegetable food, to avoid the expense of butcher-meat ; it 
rarely happens that he can amass sufficient to provide for the necessities of old age, but continues in harness, 
so to speak, to the last, watering and weeding to the day of his death ; and dies at length, pitcher in hand, 
and, like the Emperor Vespasian, on his legs. Perhaps he had dreamed of a retreat from toil ; perhaps he 
had often yearned after a shelter, like that so ardently desired by Rousseau — a white cottage with green shut- 
ters ; but it is seldom more than a dream. Outworn and broken down with fatigue, the marsh-gardener, for the 
most part, dies on the field of his labours, and rests but in the grave. 
The wife of the marsh-gardener, his sons and daughters, dig, sow, and cultivate the ground in company ; 
with him. The only alien auxiliaries that they admit, are the soldiers of the garrison of Paris, whom they 
hire at three-halfpence an hour, during the great heats of summer. On this subject we offer the reader a 
curious and authentic anecdote. 
It was on the 14th Thermidor, in the year 5 ; or, on Thursday the 1st of August 1797* Some 
detachments of the army of the Sambre and Meuse, sent for to Paris by the Executive Directory, came j 
to manoeuvre in the enclosure of Saint Lazare. The general had alighted from his horse, and was walking ! 
with some officers, when at the end of the Faubourg Poissonniere, he stopped at the gate of a marsh-garden. ! 
Without troubling himself at the presence of so dignified a personage, the cultivator, an old philosopher, | 
continued drawing his water. 
‘ Good-day, Father Cardin,’ cried the general. 
‘ What ! you know me ? ’ said the old fellow amazed, respectfully baring his white head. 
4 To be sure old friend, ever since ’87. I was then but nineteen. I served in the regiment of the French 
Guards, of which Marshal Biron was then colonel ; and was quartered at the barrier Poissonniere. Have 
you forgotten me ? ’ | 
4 Faith I have then. Let me recollect : there were then at the barracks two companies of fusiliers, and 
one of grenadiers : to which did you belong ? ’ 
4 To the grenadiers : you used to employ many of them occasionally to assist in watering your garden. 
Do you recollect, amongst others, the son of the kennel- warden at Versailles ? ’ 
4 Stop a bit ! Was he not recommended to me by his aunt, a fruit-seller at the same place ? ’ 
4 Precisely.’ 
4 Hadn’t he the trick of buying books with the money I paid him, and paying another man to mount 
guard for him, that he might have time to study them ? ’ 
4 Your memory is returning, Father Cardin.’ 
4 He used to warble like a nightingale ; I recollect he told me one day, that when a child, he used to 
sing in the choir at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Ah, I remember him well now ! What is become of him ? ’ 
4 He is become general-in-chief of the army of the Sambre and Meuse ; I am the self-same man, old 
comrade.’* 
Chambers’ Journal. 
