The Slave of the Lamp | Page 5

by a generous aid to the other. He sells a vast number of
cigarettes and cigars of the very worst quality. And it is upon the worst
quality that the Government makes the largest profit. It is in every
sense of the word a weed which grows as lustily as any of its compeers
in and around Oran, Algiers, and Bonah.
The Rue St. Gingolphe is within a stone's-throw of the École des

Beaux-Arts, and in the very centre of a remarkably cheap and yet
respectable quarter. Thus there are many young men occupying
apartments in close proximity--and young men do not mind much what
they smoke, especially provincial young men living in Paris. They feel
it incumbent upon them to be constantly smoking something--just to
show that they are Parisians, true sons of the pavement, knowing how
to live. And their brightest hopes are in all truth realised, because theirs
is certainly a reckless life, flavoured as it is with "number one" tobacco,
and those "little corporal" cigarettes which are enveloped in the blue
paper.
The tobacconist's shop is singularly convenient. It has, namely, an
entrance at the back, as well as that giving on to the street of St.
Gingolphe. This entrance is through a little courtyard, in which is the
stable and coach-house combined, where Madame Perinère, a lady who
paints the magic word "Modes" beneath her name on the door-post of
number seventeen, keeps the dapper little cart and pony which carry her
bonnets to the farthest corner of Paris.
The tobacconist is a large man, much given to perspiration. In fact, one
may safely make the statement that he perspires annually from the
middle of April to the second or even third week in October. In
consequence of this habit he wears no collar, and a man without a
collar does not start fairly on the social race. It is always best to make
inquiries before condemning a man who wears no collar. There is
probably a very good reason, as in the case of Mr. Jacquetot, but it is to
be feared that few pause to seek it. One need not seek the reason with
much assiduity in this instance, because the tobacconist of the Rue St.
Gingolphe is always prepared to explain it at length. French people are
thus. They talk of things, and take pleasure in so doing, which we, on
this side of the Channel, treat with a larger discretion.
Mr. Jacquetot does not even wear a collar on Sunday, for the simple
reason that Sunday is to him as other days. He attends no place of
worship, because he acknowledges but one god--the god of most
Frenchmen--his inner man. His pleasures are gastronomical, his
sorrows stomachic. The little shop is open early and late, Sundays,

week-days, and holidays. Moreover, the tobacconist--Mr. Jacquetot
himself--is always at his post, on the high chair behind the counter,
near the window, where he can see into the street. This constant
attention to business is almost phenomenal, because Frenchmen who
worship the god of Mr. Jacquetot love to pay tribute on fête-days at one
of the little restaurants on the Place at Versailles, at Duval's, or even in
the Palais Royal. Mr. Jacquetot would have loved nothing better than a
pilgrimage to any one of these shrines, but he was tied to the little
tobacco store. Not by the chains of commerce. Oh, no! When rallied by
his neighbours for such an unenterprising love of his own hearth, he
merely shrugged his heavy shoulders.
"What will you?" he would say; "one has one's affairs."
Now the affairs of Mr. Jacquetot were, in the days with which we have
to do, like many things on this earth, inasmuch as they were not what
they seemed.
It would be inexpedient, for reasons closely connected with the
tobacconist of the Rue St. Gingolphe, as well as with other gentlemen
still happily with us in the flesh, to be too exact as to dates. Suffice it,
therefore, to say that it was only a few years ago that Mr. Jacquetot sat
one evening as usual in his little shop. It happened to be a Tuesday
evening, which is fortunate, because it was on Tuesdays and Saturdays
that the little barber from round the corner called and shaved the vast
cheeks of the tobacconist. Mr. Jacquetot was therefore quite
presentable--doubly so, indeed, because it was yet March, and he had
not yet entered upon his summer season.
The little street was very quiet. There was no through traffic, and folks
living in this quarter of Paris usually carry their own parcels. It was
thus quite easy to note the approach of any passenger, when such had
once turned the corner. Some one was approaching now, and Mr.
Jacquetot threw away the stump