Chapter 279 A history since the opening of Corinth

Nowadays, when a Parisian enters Rue Rambuteau from the side of the vegetable market, he will find that on his right, facing Rue Mondedu, there is a shop for weaving baskets and baskets. Made-up portrait of Napoleon the Great, with the inscription: Passers-by did not necessarily expect the horrors that this place witnessed nearly thirty years ago. This is Machang Street back then. The older street name is "Chanverrerie" Street, and the famous hotel opened there is called Collins. The reader will recall that we spoke of a barricade erected here and blocked by the St. Miri barricade.Today the barricade is nowhere in people's memory.It is the barricades of Machang Street that we are looking at.

Allow us, for the sake of narrative, to adopt a simple method which we have employed in describing the Battle of Waterloo.At that time, from the vicinity of the promontory of Saint-Eustache to the north-east corner of the Paris market, which is today the entrance to the Rue Rambuteau, the houses in this area were originally in an extremely disorderly manner.For the streets here, if readers want to have a clearer concept, they may wish to assume an "N" letter, starting from Saint-Denis Street, going down to the vegetable market, and the two vertical lines are Dahuaziwo Street and Machang Street , the ramp in the middle of the two verticals is Xiaohuaziwo Street, and across these three streets is the extremely winding and winding Mondedu Street.In the place where these four streets criss-cross like a maze, on the one hand from the vegetable market to the Rue Saint-Denis, on the other hand from the Swan Street to the Rue des Missionaries, in this piece of land of 100 square meters, they are divided into strange shapes and sizes. The seven island-shaped housing groups in different directions are just like the seven piles of rocks randomly thrown on the construction site, with only a narrow gap between the houses.

We say slits because we can't think of a better way to express those dark, narrow, winding alleys lined with sloping, dilapidated nine-story buildings.Those buildings have been dilapidated to such an extent that on Machang Street and Xiaohuaziwo Street, the fronts of the houses on both sides are supported by large timbers facing each other.The street is narrow, but the gutter is wide. The center of the street is wet all year round. Pedestrians have to walk close to the shops on the street. The shops are so dark that they look like cellars. On the small road next to it, there is an ancient and thick iron gate that is more than a hundred years old.All this had been swept away in the building of the Rue Rambitot.

The name Mondedu has indeed vividly described the twists and turns of this street.A little farther away, the street name of Tuoluo Street, which is connected with Monddu, better expresses this curved image. Pedestrians who enter the Rue de la Machang from the Rue Saint-Denis will find that the further they go, the narrower the street, as if they have got into a funnel that is extended by a pipe.At the end of this relatively short street, he will see a row of tall houses blocking his way on the side next to the vegetable market. If he does not see a passable dark alley on the left and right sides, he will still think that he Stuck in a dead end.This alley is the Rue Mondedu, leading at one end to the Street of the Missionary Friars, and at the other end to the Swan Street and Little Huazi's Nest.At the bottom of this cul-de-sac, at the corner of the alley on the right, there is a house that is not as tall as the others, jutting out into the middle of the street like a promontory into the sea.

It is in this house with only three floors that a famous hotel has flourished for three hundred years.From this tavern there often came the laughter of people, and here is what old Theophile pointed out in these two lines: It's a good place, and the hotel owner has kept the hotel here for generations. In the time of Mathurin Rainier, the name of the hotel was "Pot of Roses", and the fashion at that time was a play on words, and the shop used a column painted pink as a sign.In the previous century, the venerable Natoir—one of the whimsical masters despised by today's mechanical school—had visited this hotel many times, and sat in the same table where Rainier used to drink. Drunk at the table, and once painted a bunch of Corinthian grapes on that pink post as a token of thanks.The owner of the store was so proud that he changed the old sign and wrote "Corinth Wine Shop" in gold letters under the bunch of grapes.This is where the name Corinth comes from.It is only natural that drunkards prefer brevity.The text is brief, as if walking staggeringly.Corinthians gradually replaced rose pots.The last generation of masters, known as Monsieur Huchereau, no longer knew the story, and had the column painted blue.

There was a cash desk in a hall downstairs, a billiard table in an upper hall, a spiral staircase leading through the floor to the upper floor, wine on the table, smoke on the walls, and candles during the day. This is the outline of the hotel.In the hall downstairs, there is a flap trap on the floor, which leads to the ladder leading to the cellar.On the third floor is the house of the Huchereau family.There is a secret door in the hall on the second floor, and you can go up by stairs-not so much stairs, but a ladder-and there are two attics with small window holes under the roof, which are the maid's den.The kitchen is downstairs, occupying the ground floor separately from the living room with the counter.

Monsieur Huchereau may have been a chemist by birth, but in fact he was a cook, and people not only drank in his shop, but also ate there.Hucheroux invented a famous dish that people can only eat in his shop, that is, carp stuffed with meat, which he called carpes au gras.People sat at a table nailed up with oilcloth instead of a tablecloth, and ate it in the dim light of a candle or a Louis XVI oil lamp.Many customers come from afar.One morning, Ucheroo suddenly had an idea to introduce his "specialty dish" to passers-by. He picked up a brush and dipped ink in a black paint bowl. As unique as his cooking method, he scribbled these striking characters on his wall:

CARPES HO GRAS One winter, with showers of rain and sleet, the "S" at the end of the first word and the "G" in front of the third word were erased on a whim, leaving only: CARPE HO RAS This insignificant advertisement, written to attract diners, becomes, with the help of seasons and rain, a profound exhortation. So, here, Lord Shroud, who knew Latin instead of French, learned philosophy from cooking, and caught up with Horace in the idea of ​​canceling Lent altogether.What is especially surprising is that it can also be interpreted as: Please come to my store. All of this, to this day, no longer exists.The Labyrinth of Mondeu has been disemboweled and largely demolished since 1847, and probably no longer exists.Both Rue de la Machang and Corinth had disappeared under the paving stones of Rue Rambuteau.

We have already said that Corinth was one of the places of meeting, if not contact, of Courfeyrac and his friends.It was Grantaire who discovered Corinth.The first time he went in, it was for the "Carpe Horas", and later for the "Carpes au gras".There they drank, ate, and yelled; their accounts were sometimes underpaid, sometimes underpaid, sometimes not paid, but always welcome.Monsieur Hucheroup was a good fellow. Huchereau, good fellow, as we have just said, is a small innkeeper with a side-beard, a type that makes people laugh.His facial expressions are always ruthless, as if trying to scare away customers. People who walk into his store have to look at his face, listen to his complaints, and endure his look of being ready to fight at any time and unwilling to serve dinner. .But, as we said earlier, customers are always welcome.This strange phenomenon made his hotel business flourish, and attracted him many young customers, who often said: "Go and listen to Monsieur Huchereau's complaints."He often burst out laughing.The laughter is rich and hearty, which shows that he has a bright heart.It is a character that is sad on the outside but happy on the inside.He'd be more than happy to see you afraid of him, he's kind of like a snuffbox in the shape of a pistol, the explosion it can cause is nothing more than a sneeze.

His wife, Madame Hucheroup, was an ugly, bearded woman. Around 1830, Monsieur Huchereau died.The secret method of making meat-filled carp was also lost with his death.His widow, with little consolation, continued to keep the shop open.But the cooking is not as good as it used to be, it's too bad to eat.Alcohol used to be bad, and now it's even worse.Courfeyrac and his friends went to Corinth as usual, "because of the memory of the old man," Bossuet used to say. The widow Hucheroup suffered from asthma, and her obsession with her former country life made her speech dull and her pronunciation peculiar.She still has incomplete impressions of her youth spent in the country, and she talks about it in her own unique way. She recalled that she often said, "Her happiness in the past was to hear that the root (more) bird was in the three (mountain) hawthorn singing in the woods".

The hall upstairs is the "dining room", which is a long and large room filled with round stools, square stools, armchairs, benches and tables, as well as an old lame ball table.There is a square hole in the corner of the hall, just like the hatch on a ship. People downstairs pass through this square hole through a spiral staircase to reach the upstairs. The living room only receives light from a narrow window, and a kerosene lamp is always lit, giving it a very shabby appearance.All furniture that should have four legs seems to have only three.On the plastered walls there is no decoration, but there is this quatrain dedicated to Madame Huchereau: That was painted on the wall with charcoal. Aunt Hucheroup was very similar to that image, from morning to night, as if nothing had happened, she walked back and forth in front of the quatrain.Two maids, Matlotte and Guibrot, it is never known whether they had other names, helped Madam Huchereau to place on each table the jugs of bad wine, or Spoon all kinds of offal soup for hungry ghosts into earthenware bowls.Matrot was a fat man, round, red-haired, shrill-voiced, ugly, uglier than any goblin in mythology, the late concubine of the Sultan who was favored by Lord Shroud; She always stood behind the housewife, and she was a little uglier than Madame Huchereau.Gibblot, slender, frail, white, lymphatic white, blue eyes, eyelids drooping, always so sleepy, you can say she is suffering from a kind of chronic fatigue, she is the first to get up every day, The last one slept and waited on everyone, even the other maid, who never said a word, was obedient, and always wore a tired smile, like a smile in sleep. There is also a mirror hanging above the ledger. There are these two sentences on the door entering the restaurant, written in chalk by Courfeyrac: