The Van Buren press., 1895-01-05
LAST OF FAMOUS sLuMs.
sh Giles and Five Points Gone and the
Paris Latin Quarter Fast Going.


sts Giles and Five Points Gone and the
Paris Latin Quarter Fast Going.
| Nobody Save the thieves, the beggars
| and the dram-shop keepers expressed
any sorrow when in the early years OF
her majesty's reign the greater part OF
the old and infamous st. Giles was de.
molished, and with equal equanimity
did respectable New York witness the
introduction of light and sanitation
into the wretched slum known as the
Five Points, described so wildly in the
American Notes. of Charles Dickens.
There is scarcely a ghetto left in any
city of Italy; and no voice of protest
was audible in the Italian press when
the old quarter 1T Florence twas pulled
| down some two years ago. Still would
there seem to exist among the studious
youth of Paris feeling of genuine re-
gret to learn that the old Latin quar-
ter, which was almost pulled to pieces
by Baron Haussmann, under the sec
ond empire, is doomed structurally,
and at no distant date to total disap-
pearance. Long since the Rue st.
Jacques was modernized, widened and
prolonged from the Petit-Pont to the
Rue Souffiot while the Rue Ecole de
Medicine has likewise been prolonged
to the Boulevard st. Germain.
And now has come the turn of the
Place Maubert, the narrow streets
clustering about which interesting
relic of old Paris are to be cleared
away by the municipality. The Rue
st. SEVERN des Anglais is in particu-
lar to give place to a brand-new ave-
nue., or boulevard. Three cabarets,
our Paris correspondent told us few
days since, are to vanish. These are
the establishments known by the signs
of the Pere Lunette, the Senat and
the Chateau Rouge. The first is a
literary rendezvous, cafe-chantant,
and picture gallery. The Senat
has a somewhat doubtful reputa-
tion as the favorite resort of
candidates for the bench of the
accused ut the assize court; but
the Chateau Rouge-not to be con-
founded with the elegantly dissipated
Moulin Rouge in the Champs Elysees-
has long enjoyed genuine celebrity as
typical feature of the QUARTER Latin
scholastically treated. and as the hap
py hunting-ground of the male and fe-
male students of the left bank of the
Seine.
One famous, or, rather, infamous, in
habitant of the QUARTER Latin, where
he also met his death. was Jean Paul
Marat, the evil-minded Swiss, who had
been splendidly educated at home by
mis- father, who was of Sandman ex-
traction. But it would not seem that
Jean Paul was ever a student of the
QUARTER Latin. The wretch lived
in the Rue Ecole de Medicine,
and on the 18th of July, 1893,
he was stabbed to death in his bath by
the modern Judith, the heroic Char
lotte Corday. Under the Consulate and
the first empire the young gentlemen
of the student region were fain to
keep, politically speaking, extremely
quiet, since France was ruled by per-
son called Napoleon Bonaparte, who,
like Oliver Cromwell, "stood no nom
sense" Still, always patriotic, gener-
GUS and high-spirited, the students
forgot in 1914, when Paris was
menaced by the allied armies,
how heavily the imperial regime
had weighed on them, and the
members of the faculties of law and
medicine, making common cause with
the pupils of the Polytechnic school,
organized a. strong force of infantry
cavalry and artillery, and fought most
valiantly at the defense of Charenton
and the Barriere de Trone. Conserva.
tive tranquility was enforced in the
Latin quarter during the restoration
but the studious youths, together with
the cadets of the Polytechnic, burst
out again in a furious spasm of repub-
licanism in July, 1890.
They were tolerably quiet during
the reign of Louis Philippe, but the
epoch was a halcyon one for them, sc
far as extreme sportiveness and un
bridled gayety were concerned. Those
were the roaring times of the Chau
miere, noted cabaret, whittier the
students and studentesses repaired in
order to dance the cancan, the tulipe
orageuse and the Robert Macaire-ex
ercitations long since prohibited in
Paris by the police, although pale and
limp limitations of them are occasion
ally visible in England. Gavarni ha.
lent his matchless pencil to the task
of delineating the habits of the stu
dents and the engaging tricks ant
manners of their female friends, the
grisettes-the last class which may bt
said to have entirely vanished from the
Rive Gauche. London Telegraph.