The Human Comedy: Chronicles of 19th-Century France

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Ne pas trouver de voiture

Paul Gavarni (French, 1804–1866) Ne pas trouver de voiture... (When you can't get a cab...), 1838 Lithograph Gift of Eugene L. Garbaty, 1951.79.139

Poorly paved roads and bad sanitation made traveling the streets of Paris by foot a treacher-ous proposition for a young couple out on the town. At least this couple has only their shoes to worry about. Balzac’s law student and aspiring dandy Eugène de Rastignac discovers in Old Go-riot (1835) that Paris is a physical and moral quagmire from which few emerge unsullied.

Ne pas trouver de voiture, et revenir du bal, au petit jour, avec un parapluie de portier.

When you can't get a cab and you’re coming home from a ball, at dawn, with a porter's umbrella.