The Rue de l’Hirondelle […] its clientele made up of anarchists, prowlers, students, oddballs, tarts, down-and-outs, regaling themselves on the cheap […] If there are places in the world, quarters reserved for human perversity, that surpass in ignominy these bordering on the Seine and stretching around Rue Mazarine, where are they?
—Alexandre Privat d’Anglemont, Paris anecdote
