An episode in The Ragpicker of Paris, played at the Windsor when the present People's company were there, amusingly illustrates the jealousy which exists between the companies.
The Beggar of Odessa was the play selected,--an adaptation of the Ragpicker of Paris, a play by Felix Piot, the Anarchistic agitator of the French Commune in 1871.
They waited a while and soon a ragpicker hove into view, bearing an empty sack and headed for Madrid.
The three associates chorused their protestation, but the ragpicker paid no heed.
Among the latter, and lying beside each other upon the same mattress, were father Bribri and a sergeant of the Municipal Guards, an old soldier with moustaches as grey as those of the ragpicker himself.
Soon as that was done, the ragpicker stepped quickly back.
Among these a ragpicker with a long white beard, but still strong, was conspicuous.
The ragpicker was stepping out of the shop when there came, rolling down to his feet, a frail body clad in tattered trousers and a ragged jacket, all clotted with blood.
The ragpickerhelped the soldier to sit up, and supported him until he had emptied his glass.
The group of armed men, the ragpicker excepted, who stood around the thief, consulted for a moment in a low voice.
It was her own donkey that she sold to the ragpicker who found her.
Fabry bought it from that ragpicker to whom you sold it.
Then she told him how her donkey, licking her face, had brought her back to consciousness, and how the ragpicker had saved her from starvation.
This ragpicker told me that she had met her in the Chantilly woods and that she was dying of hunger.
Such naïveté in a ragpicker was absurd, preposterous!
For if the truth is to be written here, it must be said that the ragpicker of Paris is the most degraded creature ever met in the guise of a human being.
These things cannot be said for the ragpicker of Paris.
The Paris ragpicker is seldom seen in the streets by day: his most profitable season is the night.
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!
You may have heard that a ragpicker who has risen to the rank of a boss in his trade, and so remains at home in a shop and goes out with his hook no more, is called an ogre.
The ragpicker of Paris has been often written of, but what I have read of him has never shown him to me in quite the colors I have found him in by personal observation and inquiry concerning his ways of life.
