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Chapter 5

Spring seemed to have rooted itself in the hilly streets of Belleville. At first it rained, as though enormous washtubs were being emptied from the skies. Then suddenly the heavens cleared and the sun shone, unfolding the anemic buds on the boulevard trees. Old folks sat on the weather- stained benches, raising their faces to the rays of the sun. Young mothers brought their newly-hatched infants for a first peep at the brave new world. Together with the fresh Spring winds, fresh slogans swept through the boulevards, streets and alley-ways.

"Front populaire, front populot, front populace, notre front!" the people chanted, gathering in excited groups on street corners, in front of the Town Council building, in cafés and near the school houses. Ditch diggers in their green velvet breeches, factory workers in their blue work clothes, butchers in their white smocks, immigrants with their shocks of dishevelled hair, errand boys, laundresses, vegetable hucksters, shopkeepers with sleeves rolled up to the elbow, matrons with fashionably coiffured heads and long, dangling earrings, youths with pale and leering faces, the baker, the cobbler, all gathered when the work-day was over to sip at a modest glass of wine.

Near the Couronne station of the subway, a man was mounted on a box, waving his arms in the air. The nearby electric lamps reflected themselves on his bald pate and in his