The Real Latin Quarter Part 2

A strikingly pretty woman, in a scarlet-spangled gown as red as her lips, is dining with a well-built, soldierly-looking man in black; they sit side by side as is the custom here.

The woman reminds one of a red lizard--a salamander--her "svelte" body seemingly boneless in its gown of clinging scales. Her hair is purple-black and freshly onduled; her skin as white as ivory. She has the habit of throwing back her small, well-posed head, while under their delicately penciled lids her gray eyes take in the room at a glance.

She is not of the Quarter, but the Taverne du Pantheon is a refuge for her at times, when she grows tired of Paillard's and Maxim's and her quarreling retinue.

"Let them howl on the other bank of the Seine," says this empress of the half-world to herself, "I dine with Raoul where I please."

And now one glittering, red arm with its small, heavily-jeweled hand glides toward Raoul's open cigarette case, and in withdrawing a cigarette she presses for a moment his big, strong hand as he holds near her polished nails the flaming match.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALONG THE SEINE]

Her companion watches her as she smokes and talks--now and then he leans closer to her, squaring his broad shoulders and bending lower his strong, determined face, as he listens to her,--half-amused, replying to her questions leisurely, in short, crisp sentences. Suddenly she stamps one little foot savagely under the table, and, clenching her jeweled hands, breathes heavily. She is trembling with rage; the man at her side hunches his great shoulders, flicks the ashes from his cigarette, looks at her keenly for a moment, and then smiles. In a moment she is herself again, almost penitent; this little savage, half Roumanian, half Russian, has never known what it was to be ruled! She has seen men grow white when she has stamped her little foot, but this big Raoul, whom she loves--who once held a garrison with a handful of men--he does not tremble! she loves him for his devil-me-care indifference--and he enjoys her temper.

But the salamander remembers there are some whom she dominated, until they groveled like slaves at her feet; even the great Russian n.o.bleman turned pale when she dictated to him archly and with the voice of an angel the price of his freedom.

"Poor fool! he shot himself the next day," mused the salamander.

Yes, and even the adamant old banker in Paris, crabbed, stern, unrelenting to his debtors--shivered in his boots and ended in signing away half his fortune to her, and moved his family into a permanent chateau in the country, where he keeps himself busy with his shooting and his books.

As it grows late, the taverne becomes more and more animated.

Every one is talking and having a good time. The room is bewildering in gay color, the hum of conversation is everywhere, and as there is a corresponding row of tables across the low, narrow room, friendly greetings and often conversations are kept up from one side to the other. The dinner, as it progresses, a.s.sumes the air of a big family party of good bohemians. The French do not bring their misery with them to the table. To dine is to enjoy oneself to the utmost; in fact the French people cover their disappointment, sadness, annoyances, great or petty troubles, under a masque of "blague," and have such an innate dislike of sympathy or ridicule that they avoid it by turning everything into "blague."

This veneer is misleading, for at heart the French are sad. Not to speak of their inmost feelings does not, on the other hand, prevent them at times from being most confidential. Often, the merest exchange of courtesies between those sharing the same compartment in a train, or a seat on a "bus," seems to be a sufficient introduction for your neighbor to tell you where he comes from, where he is going, whether he is married or single, whom his daughter married, and what regiment his son is in. These little confidences often end in his offering you half his bottle of wine and extending to you his cigarettes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LES BEAUX MAQUEREAUX]

If you have finished dinner, you go out on the terrace for your coffee.

The fakirs are pa.s.sing up and down in front, selling their wares--little rabbits, wonderfully lifelike, that can jump along your table and sit on their hind legs, and wag their ears; toy snakes; small leaden pigs for good luck; and novelties of every description. Here one sees women with baskets of ecrivisse boiled scarlet; an acrobat tumbles on the pavement, and two men and a girl, as a marine, a soldier, and a vivandiere, in silvered faces and suits, pose in melodramatic att.i.tudes.

The vivandiere is rescued alternately from a speedy death by the marine and the soldier.

Presently a little old woman approaches, shriveled and smiling, in her faded furbelows now in rags. She sings in a piping voice and executes between the verses a tottering pas seul, her eyes ever smiling, as if she still saw over the glare of the footlights, in the haze beyond, the vast audience of by-gone days; smiling as if she still heard the big orchestra and saw the leader with his vibrant baton, watching her every movement. She is over seventy now, and was once a premier danseuse at the opera.

But you have not seen all of the Taverne du Pantheon yet. There is an "American Bar" downstairs; at least, so the sign reads at the top of a narrow stairway leading to a small, tavern-like room, with a sawdust floor, heavy deal tables, and wooden stools. In front of the bar are high stools that one climbs up on and has a lukewarm whisky soda, next to Yvonne and Marcelle, who are both singing the latest catch of the day at the top of their lungs, until they are howled at to keep still or are lifted bodily off their high stools by the big fellow in the "type" hat, who has just come in.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOTHER AND DAUGHTER]

Before a long table at one end of the room is the crowd of American students singing in a chorus. The table is full now, for many have come from dinners at other cafes to join them. At one end, and acting as interlocutor for this impromptu minstrel show, presides one of the best fellows in the world. He rises solemnly, his genial round face wreathed in a subtle smile, and announces that he will sing, by earnest request, that popular ballad, "'Twas Summer and the Little Birds were Singing in the Trees."

There are some especially fine "barber chords" in this popular ditty, and the words are so touching that it is repeated over and over again.

Then it is sung softly like the farmhand quartettes do in the rural melodrama outside the old homestead in harvest time. Oh! I tell you it's a truly rural octette. Listen to that exhibition ba.s.s voice of Jimmy Sands and that wandering tenor of Tommy Whiteing, and as the last chord dies away (over the fields presumably) a shout goes up:

"How's that?"

"Out of sight," comes the general verdict from the crowd, and bang go a dozen beer gla.s.ses in unison on the heavy table.

"Oh, que c'est beau!" cries Mimi, leading the successful chorus in a new vocal number with Edmond's walking-stick; but this time it is a French song and the whole room is singing it, including our old friend, Monsieur Frank, the barkeeper, who is mixing one of his famous concoctions which are never twice quite alike, but are better than if they were.

The harmonic beauties of "'Twas Summer and the Little Birds were Singing in the Trees" are still inexhausted, but it sadly needs a piano accompaniment--with this it would be perfect; and so the whole crowd, including Yvonne, and Celeste, and Marcelle, and the two Frenchmen, and the girl in the bicycle clothes, start for Jack Thompson's studio in the rue des Fourneaux, where there is a piano that, even if the candles in the little Louis XVI brackets do burn low and spill down the keys, and the punch rusts the strings, it will still retain that beautiful, rich tone that every French upright, at seven francs a month, possesses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: (Bullier)]

CHAPTER III

THE "BAL BULLIER"

There are all types of "bals" in Paris. Over in Montmartre, on the Place Blanche, is the well-known "Moulin Rouge," a place suggestive, to those who have never seen it, of the quintessence of Parisian devil-me-care gaiety. You expect it to be like those clever pen-and-ink drawings of Grevin's, of the old Jardin Mabille in its palmiest days, brilliant with lights and beautiful women extravagantly gowned and bejeweled. You expect to see Frenchmen, too, in pot-hats, crowding in a circle about Fifine, who is dancing some mad can-can, half hidden in a swirl of point lace, her small, polished boots alternately poised above her dainty head. And when she has finished, you expect her to be carried off to supper at the Maison Doree by the big, fierce-looking Russian who has been watching her, and whose victoria, with its spanking team--black and glossy as satin--champing their silver bits outside, awaiting her pleasure.

But in all these antic.i.p.ations you will be disappointed, for the famous Jardin Mabille is no more, and the ground where it once stood in the Champs Elysees is now built up with private residences. Fifine is gone, too--years ago--and most of the old gentlemen in pot-hats who used to watch her are buried or about to be. Few Frenchmen ever go to the "Moulin Rouge," but every American does on his first night in Paris, and emerges with enough cab fare to return him to his hotel, where he arrives with the positive conviction that the red mill, with its slowly revolving sails, lurid in crimson lights, was constructed especially for him. He remembers, too, his first impressions of Paris that very morning as his train rolled into the Gare St. Lazare. His aunt could wait until to-morrow to see the tomb of Napoleon, but he would see the "Moulin Rouge" first, and to be in ample time ordered dinner early in his expensive, morgue-like hotel.

I remember once, a few hours after my arrival in Paris, walking up the long hill to the Place Blanche at 2 P.M., under a blazing July sun, to see if they did not give a matinee at the "Moulin Rouge." The place was closed, it is needless to say, and the policeman I found pacing his beat outside, when I asked him what day they gave a matinee, put his thumbs in his sword belt, looked at me quizzically for a moment, and then roared. The "Moulin Rouge" is in full blast every night; in the day-time it is being aired.

Farther up in Montmartre, up a steep, cobbly hill, past quaint little shops and cafes, the hill becoming so steep that your cab horse finally refuses to climb further, and you get out and walk up to the "Moulin de la Galette." You find it a far different type of ball from the "Moulin Rouge," for it is not made for the stranger, and its clientele is composed of the rougher element of that quarter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: (street scene)]

A few years ago the "Galette" was not the safest of places for a stranger to go to alone. Since then, however, this ancient granary and mill, that has served as a ball-room for so many years, has undergone a radical change in management; but it is still a cliquey place, full of a lot of habitues who regard a stranger as an intruder. Should you by accident step on Marcelle's dress or jostle her villainous-looking escort, you will be apt to get into a row, beginning with a mode of attack you are possibly ignorant of, for these "maquereaux" fight with their feet, having developed this "manly art" of self-defense to a point of dexterity more to be evaded than admired. And while Marcelle's escort, with a swinging kick, smashes your nose with his heel, his pals will take the opportunity to kick you in the back.

So, if you go to the "Galette," go with a Parisian or some of the students of the Quarter; but if you must go alone--keep your eyes on the band. It is a good band, too, and its chef d'orchestre, besides being a clever musical director, is a popular composer as well.

Go out from the ball-room into the tiny garden and up the ladder-like stairs to the rock above, crowned with the old windmill, and look over the iron railing. Far below you, swimming in a faint mist under the summer stars, all Paris lies glittering at your feet.

You will find the "Bal Bullier" of the Latin Quarter far different from the "bals" of Montmartre. It forms, with its "grand fete" on Thursday nights, a sort of social event of the week in this Quarter of Bohemians, just as the Friday afternoon promenade does in the Luxembourg garden.

If you dine at the Taverne du Pantheon on a Thursday night you will find that the taverne is half deserted by 10 o'clock, and that every one is leaving and walking up the "Boul' Miche" toward the "Bullier." Follow them, and as you reach the place l'Observatoire, and turn a sharp corner to the left, you will see the facade of this famous ball, illumined by a sizzling blue electric light over the entrance.

The facade, with its colored bas-reliefs of students and grisettes, reminds one of the proscenium of a toy theater. Back of this shallow wall bristle the tops of the trees in the garden adjoining the big ball-room, both of which are below the level of the street and are reached by a broad wooden stairway.

The "Bal Bullier" was founded in 1847; previous to this there existed the "Closerie des Lilas" on the Boulevard Montparna.s.se. You pa.s.s along with the line of waiting poets and artists, buy a green ticket for two francs at the little cubby-hole of a box-office, are divested of your stick by one of half a dozen white-capped matrons at the vestiaire, hand your ticket to an elderly gentleman in a silk hat and funereal clothes, at the top of the stairway sentineled by a guard of two soldiers, and the next instant you see the ball in full swing below you.

[Ill.u.s.tration: (portrait of man)]

There is nothing disappointing about the "Bal Bullier." It is all you expected it to be, and more, too. Below you is a veritable whirlpool of girls and students--a vast sea of heads, and a dazzling display of colors and lights and animation. Little shrieks and screams fill your ears, as the orchestra crashes into the last page of a galop, quickening the pace until Yvonne's little feet slip and her cheeks glow, and her eyes grow bright, and half her pretty golden hair gets smashed over her impudent little nose. Then the galop is brought up with a quick finish.

"Bis! Bis! Bis! Encore!" comes from every quarter of the big room, and the conductor, with his traditional good-nature, begins again. He knows it is wiser to humor them, and off they go again, still faster, until all are out of breath and rush into the garden for a breath of cool air and a "citron glace."

And what a pretty garden it is!--full of beautiful trees and dotted with round iron tables, and laid out in white gravel walks, the garden sloping gently back to a fountain, and a grotto and an artificial cascade all in one, with a figure of Venus in the center, over which the water splashes and trickles. There is a green lattice proscenium, too, surrounding the fountain, illuminated with colored lights and outlined in tiny flames of gas, and grotto-like alcoves circling the garden, each with a table and room for two. The ball-room from the garden presents a brilliant contrast, as one looks down upon it from under the trees.

[Ill.u.s.tration: (portrait of woman)]