The Real Latin Quarter Part 8

"You don't mean it!"

"Yes, I do--just now. Why, my dear, I saw it plainly!"

Poor culprits! There is no law against kissing in the open air in Paris, and besides, the tall girl in black has known the little "type" for a Parisienne age--thirty days or less.

The four innocents, who have coughed through their soup and whispered through the rest of the dinner, have now finished and are leaving, but if those at the long table notice their departure, they do not show it.

In the Quarter it is considered the height of rudeness to stare. You will find these Suzannes and Marcelles exceedingly well-bred in the little refinements of life, and you will note a certain innate dignity and kindliness in their bearing toward others, which often makes one wish to uncover his head in their presence.

CHAPTER IX

"THE RAGGED EDGE OF THE QUARTER"

There are many streets of the Quarter as quiet as those of a country village. Some of them, like the rue Vaugirard, lead out past gloomy slaughter-houses and stables, through desolate sections of vacant lots, littered with the ruins of factory and foundry whose tall, smoke-begrimed chimneys in the dark stand like giant sentries, as if pointing a warning finger to the approaching pedestrian, for these ragged edges of the Quarter often afford at night a lurking-ground for footpads.

In just such desolation there lived a dozen students, in a small nest of studios that I need not say were rented to them at a price within their ever-scanty means. It was marveled at among the boys in the Quarter that any of these exiles lived to see the light of another day, after wandering back at all hours of the night to their stronghold.

Possibly their sole possessions consisted of the clothes they had on, a few bad pictures, and their several immortal geniuses. That the gentlemen with the sand-bags knew of this I am convinced, for the students were never molested. Verily, Providence lends a strong and ready arm to the drunken man and the fool!

The farther out one goes on the rue Vaugirard, the more desolate and forbidding becomes this long highway, until it terminates at the fortifications, near which is a huge, open field, kept clear of such permanent buildings as might shelter an enemy in time of war. Scattered over this s.p.a.ce are the hovels of squatters and gipsies--fortune-telling, horse-trading vagabonds, whose living-vans at certain times of the year form part of the smaller fairs within the Quarter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: (factory chimneys along empty street)]

And very small and unattractive little fairs they are, consisting of half a dozen or more wagons, serving as a yearly abode for these shiftless people; illumined at night by the glare of smoking oil torches. There is, moreover, a dingy tent with a half-drawn red curtain that hides the fortune-telling beauty; and a traveling shooting-gallery, so short that the muzzle of one's rifle nearly rests upon the painted lady with the sheet-iron breastbone, centered by a pinhead of a bull's-eye which never rings. There is often a small carousel, too, which is not only patronized by the children, but often by a crowd of students--boys and girls, who literally turn the merry-go-round into a circus, and who for the time are cheered to feats of bareback riding by the enthusiastic bystanders.

These little Quarter fetes are far different from the great fete de Neuilly across the Seine, which begins at the Porte Maillot, and continues in a long, glittering avenue of side-shows, with mammoth carousels, bizarre in looking-gla.s.s panels and golden figures. Within the circle of all this throne-like gorgeousness, a horse-power organ shakes the very ground with its clarion blasts, while pink and white wooden pigs, their tails tied up in bows of colored ribbons, heave and swoop round and round, their backs loaded with screaming girls and shouting men.

It was near this very same Port Maillot, in a colossal theater, built originally for the representation of one of the Kiralfy ballets, that a fellow student and myself went over from the Quarter one night to "supe"

in a spectacular and melodramatic pantomime, ent.i.tled "Afrique a Paris."

We were invited by the sole proprietor and manager of the show--an old circus-man, and one of the shrewdest, most companionable, and intelligent of men, who had traveled the world over. He spoke no language but his own unadulterated American. This, with his dominant personality, served him wherever fortune carried him!

So, accepting his invitation to play alternately the dying soldier and the pursuing cannibal under the scorching rays of a tropical limelight, and with an old pair of trousers and a flannel shirt wrapped in a newspaper, we presented ourselves at the appointed hour, at the edge of the hostile country.

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

Here we found ourselves surrounded by a horde of savages who needed no greasepaint to stain their ebony bodies, and many of whose grinning countenances I had often recognized along our own Tenderloin. Besides, there were cowboys and "greasers" and diving elks, and a company of French Zouaves; the latter, in fact, seemed to be the only thing foreign about the show. Our friend, the manager, informed us that he had thrown the entire spectacle together in about ten days, and that he had gathered with ease, in two, a hundred of those dusky warriors, who had left their coat-room and barber-shop jobs in New York to find themselves stranded in Paris.

He was a hustler, this circus-man, and preceding the spectacle of the African war, he had entertained the audience with a short variety-show, to brace the spectacle. He insisted on bringing us around in front and giving us a box, so we could see for ourselves how good it really was.

During this forepart, and after some clever high trapeze work, the sensation of the evening was announced--a Signore, with an unp.r.o.nounceable name, would train a den of ten forest-bred lions!

When the orchestra had finished playing "The Awakening of the Lion," the curtain rose, disclosing the nerveless Signore in purple tights and high-topped boots. A long, portable cage had been put together on the stage during the intermission, and within it the ten pacing beasts.

There is something terrifying about the roar of a lion as it begins with its high-keyed moan, and descends in scale to a hoa.r.s.e roar that seems to penetrate one's whole nervous system.

But the Signore did not seem to mind it; he placed one foot on the sill of the safety-door, tucked his short riding-whip under his arm, pulled the latch with one hand, forced one knee in the slightly opened door, and sprang into the cage. Click! went the iron door as it found its lock. Bang! went the Signore's revolver, as he drove the snarling, roaring lot into the corner of the cage. The smoke from his revolver drifted out through the bars; the house was silent. The trainer walked slowly up to the fiercest lion, who reared against the bars as he approached him, striking at the trainer with his heavy paws, while the others slunk into the opposite corner. The man's head was but half a foot now from the lion's; he menaced the beast with the little riding-whip; he almost, but did not quite strike him on the tip of his black nose that worked convulsively in rage. Then the lion dropped awkwardly, with a short growl, to his forelegs, and slunk, with the rest, into the corner. The Signore turned and bowed. It was the little riding-whip they feared, for they had never gauged its sting. Not the heavy iron bar within reach of his hand, whose force they knew. The vast audience breathed easier.

"An ugly lot," I said, turning to our friend the manager, who had taken his seat beside me.

"Yes," he mused, peering at the stage with his keen gray eyes; "green stock, but a swell act, eh? Wait for the grand finale. I've got a girl here who comes on and does art poses among the lions; she's a dream--French, too!"

A girl of perhaps twenty, enveloped in a bath gown, now appeared at the wings. The next instant the huge theater became dark, and she stood in full fleshings, in the center of the cage, brilliant in the rays of a powerful limelight, while the lions circled about her at the command of the trainer.

"Ain't she a peach?" said the manager, enthusiastically.

"Yes," said I, "she is. Has she been in the cages long?" I asked.

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

"No, she never worked with the cats before," he said; "she's new to the show business; she said her folks live in Nantes. She worked here in a chocolate factory until she saw my 'ad' last week and joined my show. We gave her a rehearsal Monday and we put her on the bill next night. She's a good looker with plenty of grit, and is a winner with the bunch in front."

"How did you get her to take the job?" I said.

"Well," he replied, "she balked at the act at first, but I showed her two violet notes from a couple of swell fairies who wanted the job, and after that she signed for six weeks."

"Who wrote the notes?" I said, queryingly.

"I wrote 'em!" he exclaimed dryly, and he bit the corner of his stubby mustache and smiled. "This is the last act in the olio, so you will have to excuse me. So long!" and he disappeared in the gloom.

There are streets and boulevards in the Quarter, sections of which are alive with the pa.s.sing throng and the traffic of carts and omnibuses.

Then one will come to a long stretch of ma.s.sive buildings, public inst.i.tutions, silent as convents--their interminable walls flanking garden or court.

The Boulevard St. Germain is just such a highway until it crosses the Boulevard St. Michel--the liveliest roadway of the Quarter. Then it seems to become suddenly inoculated with its bustle and life, and from there on is crowded with bourgeoise and animated with the commerce of market and shop.

An Englishman once was so fired with a desire to see the gay life of the Latin Quarter that he rented a suite of rooms on this same Boulevard St.

Germain at about the middle of this long, quiet stretch. Here he stayed a fortnight, expecting daily to see from his "chambers" the gaiety of a Bohemia of which he had so often heard. At the end of his disappointing sojourn, he returned to London, firmly convinced that the gay life of the Latin Quarter was a myth. It was to him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: (crowded street market)]

But the man from Denver, the "Steel King," and the two thinner gentlemen with the louis-lined waistcoats who accompanied him and whom Fortune had awakened in the far West one morning and had led them to "The Great Red Star copper mine"--a find which had ever since been a source of endless amus.e.m.e.nt to them--discovered the Quarter before they had been in Paris a day, and found it, too, "the best ever," as they expressed it.

They did not remain long in Paris, this rare crowd of seasoned genials, for it was their first trip abroad and they had to see Switzerland and Vienna, and the Rhine; but while they stayed they had a good time Every Minute.

The man from Denver and the Steel King sat at one of the small tables, leaning over the railing at the "Bal Bullier," gazing at the sea of dancers.

"Billy," said the man from Denver to the Steel King, "if they had this in Chicago they'd tear out the posts inside of fifteen minutes"--he wiped the perspiration from his broad forehead and pushed his twenty-dollar Panama on the back of his head.

"Ain't it a sight!" he mused, clinching the b.u.t.t of his perfecto between his teeth. "Say!--say! it beats all I ever see," and he chuckled to himself, his round, genial face, with its double chin, wreathed in smiles.

"Say, George!" he called to one of the 'copper twins,' "did you get on to that little one in black that just went by--well! well!! well!!! In a minute!!"

Already the pile of saucers on their table reached a foot high--a record of refreshments for every Yvonne and Marcelle that had stopped in pa.s.sing. Two girls approach.

"Certainly, sit right down," cried the Steel King. "Here, Jack,"--this to the aged garcon, "smoke up! and ask the ladies what they'll have"--all of which was unintelligible to the two little Parisiennes and the garcon, but quite clear in meaning to all three.