Page:The illustrators of Montmartre.pdf/21

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A. STEINLEN
7

over the myriad glittering roofs and towers and domes of Paris, which lies seething far below, The roar and clatter of the great city reach his window but fitfully, as the sounds are hurried hither and thither on the wings of wayward breezes, the while great stretches of urban landscape are plunged into purple shadow or bathed in golden sunlight as the fleeting clouds chase one another across the great dome of sky.

Most of the artists to be referred to in this little volume are intimately connected with this same breezy, turbulent suburb, and also with the before-mentioned "Chat Noir". This "cabaret", founded and carried on by Salis, himself an artist, for years attracted "le tout Paris" by means of its "réunions" of the most up-to-date artists, authors, and actors, and its unique theatre. Along with its sprightly, risky weekly paper it would form matter for a weighty volume of itself. The students from the "Quartier Latin", moreover, came to share their joyous, reckless hours of leisure between their own beloved neighbourhood of the "Boul' Mich'," and the far-away Mount of the Windmills — Montmartre.

Peasants, workgirls, the starving, the insane, the destitute, those who are fighting misery and those who ate making it, garrotters, thieves, murderers, and a large assortment of parasitical ruffians as well, have all found a sympathetic student and recorder in Steinlen, He understands them, he has a big