watching this poor wretch prodding in a gutter after hopeless
infinitesimals, I have pictured to myself what emotions would surge
through his breast if a New York garbage-barrel were to be set down
before him. I am not sure he would be able to refrain from fainting
away at sight of such a mine of wealth. Happy ragpicker of New York
who takes his morning stroll and his lordly pick from the contents of
the teeming barrels our servants set out on the pavement for him! _He_
does not have to work at night: he is a sort of prince, compared to
his Paris fellow. If a Paris ragpicker could have the monopoly of the
barrels in a single block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, I am
convinced he would retire from business at the end of ten years with
an independent fortune--that is, if with the New York barrels he could
have the Paris market and live on Paris fare. It is an old story that
in Paris nothing is wasted. The very mud in the streets is gathered up
and sold. There is a market for everything.

An important division of the army of blousards is that composed of the
street-sweepers of Paris. They share the Rue Mouffetard and the Place
Maubert with the ragpickers, and, like them, are scattered about in
various poorer quarters of the city. Ever-picturesque argot has given
them a name of ridicule, and calls them _les peintres_ and their
brooms their inspired brushes. Every tourist has seen those unhappy
wretches at work, sometimes alone, sometimes in gangs of three or
four, men and women together. There is no distinction of sex in this
branch of industry, as indeed there is in none of the lowest fields of
labor in Paris. Women and girls are quite often ragpickers; among the
street-sweepers they form a good half of the force; they are also
street--peddlers, dragging cartloads of vegetables about and crying
aloud their wares; they are porters, lugging bundles on their backs;
they are oyster-openers, hacking away with iron knife at coarse
shells; they even drive drays and big market-wagons; they split wood
and shovel coal, and in a hundred ways confound and confuse those
theorizers who pretend that male bone and muscle is by nature brawnier
than female. The female scavengers are quite as strong, quite as
coarse, quite as dirty, and can smoke their pipes with quite as much
gusto as their male compeers.

The scavengers are six thousand in number, and are employed by
contractors, who pay them at the rate of four to eight sous per hour.