tching its lines of lamps into the distance from the point where
the Rue Mouffetard stops and the Avenue Gobelins begins. The old
street--the portion of it which remains--looks with a dazed and dirty
sorrowfulness up the broad, clean avenue which once was dirty and
narrow like itself. The work of transformation ceased with the
breaking out of the war with Germany. So did the like work in numerous
other quarters of the town which needed it quite as badly as the Rue
Mouffetard. But under the government of the Septennat the work has
been resumed in some degree. The double purpose is hereby served of
letting in light on the dark spots of the town, and of giving
employment to the needy blousards, who might get into obstreperous
moods again if crowded too hard by poverty and want. It seems at first
sight an awful destruction of property, this work of demolition, but I
believe it has been proved that the rise in value of the real estate
thus regenerated more than compensates for the losses sustained, in
the long run. All the blousard cares about the matter, however, is
that it gives him work, and that is what he craves.

To see gangs of brawny fellows tearing down walls, ripping off doors,
carrying away timbers on their shoulders when a street is in its
decaying stage, is to see a most interesting sight. At the entrance of
the street a sign is put up: "RUE BARREE." The front walls of
buildings torn away, winding staircases are seen climbing up with all
their burden of years upon them and all their secret weaknesses
exposed. Sometimes these stairways are of stone, sometimes of wood:
when the latter, if in a fair state of preservation, they are taken
away bodily, to be put up again in some remote quarter of the town.
Shop-windows are offered for sale for like purposes. At night the
scene is made lurid by the glare of triangular lanterns, which throw
out their warning red light, and the entrance to the street is
carefully guarded. Gradually the old buildings are taken to pieces and
removed, bit by bit. New walls of creamy stone, with modern windows,
handsomely carved cornices, stone piazzas, and the like, are built up.
The street has become widened where it was narrow, and straightened
where it was crooked. The very sidewalks on either side of the new
boulevard or avenue are as wide as was the whole of the old street
which has now disappeared. And with the old street the old tenants
have disappeared too. Handsome shops occupy the