There is a kind of lodgers worth especial mention. The men working in the yards of masons, carpenters, and others—masons especially—frequently come from the provinces. They are not part of the fixed population; but are men who have left their wives and families to come up to the town and earn a sum of money. For this they work most energetically; living in the most abstemious manner, in order that they may not break into their hoard. They occupy furnished lodgings, flocking very much together. Thus the masons from the departments of la Creuse and la Haute Vienne occupy houses let out in furnished rooms exclusively to themselves, in the quarters of the Hotel de Ville, the Arsenal, Saint Marcel, and in other parts of Paris. The rigid parsimony of these men is disappointed terribly when any crisis happens. They are forced to eat their savings, to turn their clothing and their tools into food, and, by the revolution of eighteen hundred and forty-eight, were reduced to such great destitution, that in some of the houses occupied by them one dress was all that remained to all the lodgers. They wore it in turn, one going out in it to seek for work while all the rest remained at home in bed. The poor fellows thanked the want of exercise for helping them to want of appetite—the only kind of want that poverty desires.
These men, however, working in the great yards, eating their meals near them in an irregular and restless way, form clubs and associations which lead not seldom to strikes—blunders which we call placing ourselves _en Grève_. They take the name _en Grève_ from the place in which one class of builders’ workmen assemble when waiting to be hired. Various places are chosen by sundry workmen and workwomen for this practice of waiting to be hired. Laundresses, for example, are to be found near the church of our Lady of Lorette, where they endure, and too often enjoy, coarse words from passers-by.
Except in the case of the masons and labourers from the departments, it is to be regarded as no good sign when a workman makes a residence of furnished lodgings. The orderly workman marries, and acquires the property of furniture. The mason from the departments lives cheaply, and saves, to go home with money to his family, and acquire in his own village the property of land. The workman bound to Paris, who dwells only in furnished lodgings, and has bought no furniture, has rarely saved, and has rarely made an honest marriage. In most cases he is a lover of pleasure, frequents the theatre and the wine shop. From wine he runs on to the stronger stimulus of brandy; but these leave to him some gleams of his national vivacity. The most degraded does not get so lumpish as the English workman, whose brains have become sodden in the public-houses by long trains of pots of beer. By far the largest portion of the Paris workmen possess furniture: only twenty-one in a hundred—and that includes, of course, the mobile population, the masons, etc.—live in furnished lodgings.