Chapter II: Part 2

A waiter sprang through the swinging door shouting his order. He never was forced to repeat it, so alert were the staff of cooks that they seemed to have been awaiting him.

“_Un Chateaubriand aux pommes!_” cries a garçon.

“_Un Chateaubriand aux pommes!_” corroborates a chief cook.

Instantly a man dodges out of the meat room, a second later the steak is sizzling over the fire, the vegetable cook stands ready with his potatoes, a fourth prepares the sauce, a fifth attends to the plates, and the sixth looks after the garnishing of the dish.

“I am glad you find it interesting,” said my host the chef, as he joined me for a moment’s rest.

I bowed my compliments.

“And is this the only kitchen for so large an establishment?” I ventured, in surprise.

“Yes, the only one; we do it all here. It is the organization which counts, not the space. With these five ranges and this force of men we are competent to handle as many dinners as come under the roof.”

The chef’s eye seemed everywhere. When the rush was over, his private coupé would call for him, but at present he was on guard.

I marveled at this man’s memory. What a catalog of sauces, each one containing scores of ingredients, he must carry in his head! What a list of dishes, each one prepared in a dozen different ways! I imparted to him the fact that my culinary skill was limited to boiling an egg, and he laughed good-humoredly, his intelligent face, with its white mustache, glowing under his white cap in the glare of a nearby fire.

“Precisely, monsieur, but you see it is the same in every profession; one must learn the minute parts which tend to make something which in itself pleases, whether it be through the mind, the pocket, or the stomach,” and, asking me to excuse him for a moment, he disappeared in the direction of a cloud of mushroom steam to overlook an entrée.

A cook near me was busy with the final sizzle of a duck _en casserole_.

The man was an artist in the way he stirred his sauce. Even in the very handling of the burnished copper _batterie_ of saucepans about him.

I fully expected this culinary prestidigitator would produce the lady’s ring from the duck he had just finished cooking and discover the rabbit in my overcoat pocket, but the duck was smothered so quickly in a rich brown sauce, with a dash of this and a pinch of that from the magician, and finally thrust for a final magic touch over the crackling blaze, that, before I could guess what might happen next, it was on its way to some _cabinet particulier_, where a quiet little man with gray hair was waiting to carve it.

It was he who won the grand prize for his skill in getting sixty slices from a single duck. He has quite the air of a dignified surgeon who has been called in consultation.

He carves with a plain knife sharpened upon the back of a plate. The duck seems to fall apart under his expert touch. He mashes into a paste the liver and heart, pouring over the whole the red blood gravy. _Voilà!_ It is done; and, passing the first dish to one of the group of garçons at his elbow who have been watching him, he bows and leaves the room. The group of waiters about him are deeply interested in this object lesson, and it is this willingness to learn which makes in Paris so many good _garçons de café_.

The famous old Maison Dorée has closed its doors. The business of this celebrated restaurant had fallen off so seriously that its death was but a question of days. Paris had deserted it in its old age and dined elsewhere.

Many of the waiters, who had spent their lifetime beneath its roof, hoped against hope, and continued to serve the few habitués who remained faithful to the end.

Occasionally a party of strangers would open the door, and, finding the restaurant deserted, close it apologetically and go on their way to a gayer place.

In encouraging moments like these the veteran waiters ceremoniously took their places and the dignified _maître d’hôtel_ advanced to greet the newcomers bravely, as if the ruin of the old house were not an open secret. There is something pathetic about the death of an establishment like the Maison Dorée.

How much gaiety it has seen in its lifetime!

How faithfully it has cheered those who entered its doors!

Here the _vie Parisienne_ that Grévin and Cham drew so inimitably, came to dine in the old days; the courtezans of Balzac; the belles and beaux of the Empire.

Just as the Maison Dorée lived in thoroughbred dignity so did it die. Yesterday morning the shades of the windows were drawn down. The end had come. A simple card on the door bore the words:

“LE RESTAURANT
EST FERMÉ.”

And one felt like laying a wreath on its threshold.

Drawn by Sancha]

On Saturdays the Café de la Cascade, in the Bois, is taken possession of by _bourgeois_ wedding parties, with brides in white satin gowns and grooms and their friends in dress-suits, which they had donned early in the morning and in which they have sung and cheered, and drunk the bride’s health and the groom’s health, and that of _les belles soeurs_ and _les petits_ nephews and all the innumerable _enfants_, cousins and _cousines_, comrades and _amis_ connected by blood, marriage or friendship with the happy pair.

No wonder that by midnight, after such a day of continuous festivity, the poor bride is wild-eyed, flushed, exhausted and demoralized! For this _bourgeois_ wedding had started at ten A. M. with the civil ceremony at the City Hall, the civil wedding being the only one legally recognized in France. From the hall the party proceeded to the church, where most brides insist on going after the civil ceremony. Here occurs another long function, including an address by the priest or minister. Then the bridesmaids, accompanied by the men of honor, _garçons d’honneur_, of which there are three classes, make two collections among the assemblage: one for the poor and the other for the church. This procession is headed by a gorgeously dressed major-domo, “Le Suisse,” who pounds the floor with his heavy baton as he strides solemnly through the aisles warning everyone to get their donations ready. The collections referred to are made either in a butterfly net, which discreetly hides the sous from view, or in purses made to match the gowns of the bridesmaids and carried ostensibly open for the expected louis.

There are several classes of weddings, just as there are several classes of funerals, their magnificence progressing in proportion to the money paid. You can be married at the little altar or the big one, enter under a spangled canopy at the front door or by an unadorned modest side one.

Now comes another ordeal for the bride; having gone to the sacristy after the ceremony, she is obliged to shake hands with everyone present and be kissed on both cheeks by cousins, friends or even acquaintances. Then the procession of carriages drives up, each being given its precedence in line. They are filled and start off for the wedding breakfast at the restaurant. This means a well-to-do wedding; many couples can afford only one huge stage which alternately serves in going to and from the races, while others go on foot, often six or seven arm-in-arm romping through the streets, singing or stopping at some little _buvette_ for a glass of wine. The poor bride walks on and on, holding her satin train. She is half exhausted, but is expected to be bright and gay. Poor victim, the day has only begun for her!

After the wedding breakfast at the restaurant, trains are taken to some nearby country place like St. Cloud, or carriages to the Café de la Cascade. Here occurs the indispensable dinner, a feast of uproarious _camaraderie_, where dishes succeed dishes, and where each one is expected to be rollicking and witty and sing his song. In accordance with an old custom, to the first man of honor is allotted the privilege of trying to steal the garter of the bride.

The dance which follows this dinner lasts until morning, and lucky are the bride and groom if they can escape by midnight.

But mild indeed are these _bourgeois_ weddings of the city compared with those of the well-to-do peasants! These include festivities which last three days, most of which time is spent at table, where beef is followed by veal, veal by mutton, mutton by rabbit, rabbit by chicken, and chicken by pork, and so on through the list of viands. This continuous feast is only made possible by consuming from time to time a stiff glass of applejack.

“_Vive la mariée!_” cry a dozen overjoyous ones in front of a café at St. Cloud as my _voiture_ tries to pass. My _cocher_ grins and cracks his whip. The best man, a soldier, the groom and a dozen others, noisy with the sound wine of Touraine, link arms in front of my rawboned steed, yelling:

“You cannot pass, monsieur, unless you cry _Vive la mariée!_”

“_Vive la mariée!_” I cry, loudly as I can, in my ineradicable accent.

There is a welcoming shout from the wedding party. The bride throws me a kiss. The little cousins and _cousines_ and the _beau-frère_ and _belle-mère_ wave their handkerchiefs in acknowledgment, a dozen tumblers of red wine are offered to me, and as many are thrust at the fat _cocher_ who is now waving his glazed hat in the air with enthusiasm.

“_Vive la République! Vive la mariée! Vive la France!_” come from a score of throats as I am allowed to proceed. As we rattle up a crooked street, the din of the festivity grows fainter and fainter in the distance, now I hear faintly the indistinct blare of the band playing below for the dance, and now and then a cheer, stronger than the others, floats up from the far-away café: “_Vive la mariée!_”

Dining in the open air is brought to its perfection in the Bois de Boulogne.

The Chalet du Touring Club, at the entrance of the Bois, is a popular rendezvous for the bicycling Mimis and the Faustines, and their admirers. At the _apéritif_ hour in the afternoon, this cosmopolitan café under the trees is crowded with a mixed assemblage. It is an excellent place in which to breakfast well and at a moderate price.

The Pavillon Chinois, with its picturesque pagoda-like roof, is frequented by a richer class.

During the season, between five and seven, all of smart Paris may be seen at the Pavillon d’Armenonville. At this hour the tables in the garden are filled with pretty women in chic toilettes, accompanied by faultlessly dressed gentlemen whose bank accounts have managed thus far to survive.

By six, the scene resembles a garden party. There is a mixture of nature and artifice, of exquisite toilettes, of gay flowers blooming in beds under the shadows of sturdy trees up in whose branches the birds flutter and sing. One’s ears are filled with babble of voices and the soft laughter of those whose life for the moment is happy. The sun has sunk in an opalescent haze, its rays reflect upon the glass of the pavilion and the edge of the tiny kiosks whence come the chatter and laughter of some jolly _partie carrée_ still at table over a late _déjeuner_. Above the hum drones the rhythm of the Tziganes; their violins cry in some plaintive gipsy song. Now the strings rush into the most seductive of Viennese waltzes, melting away, to begin afresh in some mad Hungarian czardas.

Smart turnouts and little private victorias with tinkling bells are constantly arriving and departing. Now there is a sound of prancing hoofs and the clink of harness at the entrance of the garden, and in rumbles a break perfectly driven by a well-groomed gentleman posed in faultless style on the box seat. By his side sits a Parisienne of Parisiennes—from the glossy undulations of her black hair to the tips of her tiny patent leather boots, both of which are now occupied in daintily descending the steps of the break. She is a famous beauty who sings at one of the _cafés concerts_, quite young, with pretty white teeth and an olive skin.

Her companion leaves his turnout to the care of his grooms, and the break with its shining red wheels rumbles away in the direction of the carriage shed. The charming brunette is radiant from the drive; they have been nearly to Poissy and back. She will now have a _gaufrette_ and a _coupe de fruits au champagne_, and the gentleman who drove so cleverly a cigarette and a long brandy and soda. This dainty Parisienne insists on preparing this “_drôle de boisson anglaise_” herself, and, with a rippling laugh, puts in the ice and the brandy and then the soda, and, as a final touch, in a spirit of deviltry, adds a cherry from her own _coupe_, for which archness she is scolded by her companion, to whom she blows a kiss in return.

At eight, the Pavillon d’Armenonville will be brilliant with a throng of diners—men in spotless shirt-fronts and women in toilets of lace and jewels—and crisp notes of the Bank of France will change hands for rich food and sparkling wine. The season for these delightful retreats of the Bois being short, the rents for them are exorbitant, and so the _monde_ must pay the fiddler accordingly.

At the end of the Bois is the Chalet du Cycle, another restaurant with a superb garden flaming in flowers, and dotted with cozy thatched kiosks like the huts of some jungle village and dotted with tables shaded by huge red umbrellas. Here at the _apéritif_ hour the crowd comes _en bicyclette_ and automobile, and at night the hurrying waiters serve parties dining cozily in the glow of shaded candles. The Chalet du Cycle is a charming place in which to breakfast some sunny morning with the Seine gliding close by under the trees.

Another segment of fairy-land, even more exquisite in its _mise en scène_, is the Café de Madrid. Here a low, rambling, half-timbered house forms a courtyard which is as brilliant at night with the _haut monde_ at dinner. Here, too, as at Armenonville, the carriages, entering under a gateway smothered in trailing vines, drive in past the tables. Everywhere about you there are flowers—banks of geraniums and fragrant roses. When you have dined, you can turn your armchair and watch the beauty about you and the victorias coming and going.

It is characteristic for Parisians to sit for hours over dinner. The Café de Madrid at night resembles closely a garden party given at the château of some private estate. It is the absence of the feeling of publicity that makes it so charming.

And after all this restful luxury there is the cool Bois to drive in, through forest alleys with the smell of the fresh woods all about and the sparkle of stars overhead.

Who will ever tell the history of this famous playground of rich and poor? How many of its silent trees have sheltered and kept secret the romances of the world! How much honor has been risked for the sake of cruel, triumphant women whose hearts were tender in proportion to their needs! And how many real loves have sought it as a refuge!

If all this is sad, turn back in your drive towards the sparkling lights of the city, to Paris who is now wearing all her jewels. Some of her strings of diamonds are glittering through the vista of black trees ahead—or are these only the footlights of the great stage whereon so many comedies, so many tragedies, and so many light farces, have been played?

Chapter Three

SOME “RISQUÉ” CURTAINS WITH SERIOUS LININGS

Snug in the corner of an ancient alley called the Cité d’Antin is the “Théâtre de la Robinière.” Its official address is “3 (bis) Rue La Fayette,” that is, you are requested to enter there and, following your nose around the corner, grope your way in the obscurity over the cobbles and make a second turn to the right. At last a green lantern over the doorway glimmers ahead of you. It is the Robinière now installed in what was once the Théâtre Mondain.

The Robinière once existed on the first platform of the Tour Eiffel; since then its proprietor, Monsieur François Robin, has moved it to its permanent address, all of which speaks well for its success. It is filled nightly with Parisians of the vicinity.

Much of the success of this tiny theater is due to the indefatigable effort of its director, Monsieur Robin, who literally passes his life in his playhouse, assisted in its management by his wife. These two, without help, without even a secretary, run the theater, often working from early morning until long past midnight, writing their own posters, watching the rehearsals of their excellent small company (in which Madame plays), attending to press notices, receiving authors and artists, and, in short, making a success of this old “Salle d’Antin” where all its preceding owners met with ruin.

There is nothing elaborate about this stuffy little bandbox of a theater. Its narrow auditorium is plain, dingy and old-fashioned. A piano serves for the orchestra, but the comedies are clever and the acting excellent—two things which Parisians demand first of all.

The Robinière is but one of a number of miniature theaters in Paris beginning at eight-thirty or nine o’clock, and producing each night four short realistic comedies, often with some clever _chansonnier_ singing his creations during the _entr’actes_. No two of these theaters are alike, and in all of them there is good acting; even in the smallest of these so-called _bouis-bouis_ you will find the actors to be men and women who have worked patiently through the National Conservatoire studying their art under the best masters.

Fortunately in France the woman who has become suddenly notorious through her divorce or the latest scandal is not snapped up by theatrical managers as a star before the ink is dry on the Sunday papers detailing her disgrace. In Paris there are music hall _revues_ to receive these meteors when they fall and where they may parade their beauty and their clothes, or their lack of them, with the rest of the _demi-mondaines_.

During the intervals between the plays at the Robinière a single aged “_garçon de café_” takes the orders for the refreshments in the cold, stuffy little “_fumoir_,” while behind the bar one of the leading ladies of the comedy graciously assists him by opening the bottled beer and attending to the drinks, very much as a good-natured woman would help by cutting the cake at a children’s party.

When the bell rings for the curtain Madame hurries out of her apron and back to her part in “Les Deux Jarretières,” a farce so replete with amusing complications that the small audience is kept in a continual titter of good humor. In the comedy following, entitled “Le Sofa de Monsieur Dupré,” the story is even more simple. A respectable widow, Madame Dupré, living alone in her old age, is attended by her maid Pauline, whom she has come to regard as an indispensable companion. Pauline makes the old lady comfortable in her favorite chair, tucks under her feet her foot-warmer, and, leaving her mistress, goes out to post a letter.

In the interval which elapses before her return a neighbor calls and kindly informs Madame Dupré that the indispensable Pauline has been the mistress of Madame Dupré’s revered husband. When Pauline returns, Madame, in her indignation, turns her out of the house. The foot-warmer grows cold, the fire in the grate goes out, a thousand little comforts have not been attended to, and the old lady decides to send for Pauline and forgive her, preferring that her few remaining years should pass in peace and comfort.

Quite different is the Théâtre de la Bodinière, founded by Monsieur Bodin, the former secretary of the historic Comédie Française. The Bodinière is devoted to interpreting the work of young authors by celebrated artists. It is a theater where respectable _jeunes filles_ may be taken in safety. The plays are as harmless as the Rollo books.

The playwright, Aimé Ducrocq, is the founder and manager of a cozy blue-and-gold bonbonnière of a theater called the “Rabelais,” in Montmartre. Here, as the title suggests, the comedies and farces are thoroughly Rabelaisian. It might even be averred that they are more so than elsewhere, which is saying a great deal. Here farces like “La Vertu De Nini,” “La Journée d’une Demi-Mondaine” and “Le Corset de Germaine” pack the small auditorium nightly. Many of these are written to a point where the curtain discreetly drops upon the situation, but none of them harbors a line or a gesture of vulgarity. It is not worth while having trouble with the police, and happily the French policeman is both broad-minded and discreet in enforcing an arbitrary rule. When you ask a policeman here why a thing is prohibited he will shrug his shoulders, stare at you in astonishment, and reply brusquely: “It is prohibited because it is prohibited!”

Which settles all further argument.

There are but two things which I find absolutely interdicted: malicious satires against the Government, and breaking the Parisian peace. The rest, which has merely to do with “l’Amour,” seems to the policemen not worth bothering their heads about.

A “_’Cipal_” (municipal guard) is detailed during a performance of any kind in Paris in every theater, music-hall or _cabaret_, to jot down in a small black-covered book anything which may offend his sense of delicacy, but he is generally too hugely amused in watching the stage to do so. During moments like these his ruddy visage, with its bristly mustache, at other times so stern, is wreathed in wrinkles of delight, and his formidable short sword sleeps peacefully in its scabbard. These are the lighter hours of his existence; where he is needed you will find him brave as a bulldog and quick as a cat, and intelligent and honest as well. You cannot bribe a French policeman.

The one who generously offered me half his seat at a crowded performance the other night poured forth his opinions _sotto voce_ during the second act of a risqué comedy. He was sincere and enthusiastic in his praise of our President and struck his brass-buttoned chest as he pronounced him a good man and a brave soldier; however, I regret that some of his views of La Fayette are unfit for publication, as he regarded him as a traitor to France.

“_Oui, monsieur_,” he said, savagely; “a man who gave his strength and knowledge and power to another country when that man belonged to our army was a traitor.” He said other things, too, about the gentleman, but they will not bear a graceful translation.

Below the Rabelais, past an iron grill and at the end of a cobbled court in the Rue Chaptal, is the “Grand Guignol.” Its oak interior in carved Gothic was once the studio of the celebrated painter, Rochegrosse, and resembles at first glance, except for the boxes running beneath the low choir gallery, the lecture room of a modern Episcopal church. The prevailing tone of the room, gray corduroy and oak, is thoroughly restful. From the spandrelled ceiling hang iron chandeliers of ecclesiastical design. A paneled frieze of allegorical paintings, representing the human passions—envy, hate and jealousy—enrich the cove. Carved angels support the corbels of the ceiling beams, and a square of rare Gobelins tapestry enriches the wall back of the gallery. A simple proscenium, in keeping with the rest of this exquisite interior, fills the end of the room.

Drawing by F. Berkeley Smith

PAULINE]

There is a small foyer, too, with a Gothic stairway, which contains a unique collection of steel engravings of players of bygone days. Snug in an alcove beside this interesting _promenoir_ there is a tiny bar. At nine the boxes beneath the Sunday-school gallery are brilliant with women’s toilets, framed by the white shirt-fronts and sombre black of their well-groomed escorts. Such is this charming after-dinner theater, which has been so appropriately named “The Big Punch and Judy,” where very cleverly constructed short plays are presented, such as “Scrupules,” “Une Affaire de Mœurs,” “La Coopérative” and “La Fétiche.”

They are plays of dramatic incident rather than of plots. Some of them are as risqué as the most daring at the Rabelais. Some are full of pathos, others screamingly funny, and still others revolting in their realism.

Photo by F. Berkeley Smith

LA FÉTICHE AT THE GRAND GUIGNOL

Enter the Murderer]

Of the last class is “Une Affaire de Mœurs.” In this the identity of a famous judge of the high court is discovered by two _demi-mondaines_ who are dining with him in a _cabinet particulier_. The judge has at one time sentenced the lover of one of the women and she threatens to expose him in revenge. He offers money, and finally half his fortune to quiet her, but the woman is determined to avenge her lover. Then his terror at the thought of scandal and disgrace brings on a stroke of apoplexy. The two women, now thoroughly frightened, send the old waiter out for a doctor. He hurries back with a young physician whom he finds carousing with his friends in the café below. The young man stands aghast as he recognizes the form in the chair; it is his father. He listens at the heart, then buries his head in his hands. The judge is dead. The women huddle in a corner terrified. The room is in disorder, reeking with the odor of cigarettes and spilled wine.

“Come, monsieur,” gently urges the aged garçon. “Pull yourself together, we must get the body into a cab unnoticed.”

The realization of the disgrace and publicity of the _affaire_ when it will be known in the café below, braces the son to act quickly. He suggests to the garçon that the body be removed by the back stairs.

“There is no back stairs, monsieur,” confesses the garçon. “The only way out is by the main stairway and through the café. We will walk monsieur out and support him between us. I have helped to do it once before that way; no one will suspect—they will think monsieur is drunk.”

Together they put on the Inverness and, adjusting the opera hat of the deceased and supporting the body beneath the arms, walk slowly with it to the door leading to the stairs, the two women preceding them, singing hysterically the _marche des pompiers_!

As the curtain fell the audience seemed in a stupor. A woman beside me sat staring at the floor, crying. Men coughed and remained silent. Not until the pianist in the foyer struck up a lively polka did they leave their seats for a little cognac and a breath of air.

Just such realism is typical of the Grand Guignol.

Even smaller than the Grand Guignol is the cozy “Théâtre des Mathurins,” with a pretty foyer twice the size of its small auditorium, which scarcely holds two hundred.

Here short plays like “Monsieur Camille,” “Le Quadrille” and “Les Deux Courtisanes” are played with rare finish by De Marcy, Cora Lapercerie, and other famous beauties of the Parisian stage.

During the _entr’actes_ a shutter over an archway of the foyer opens and the head of a celebrated singing satirist is thrust out from the dark closet like the punctual cuckoo in the clock. During the intermission he sings his original songs to the listening throng, a mixture of the _grand-_ and the _demi-monde_ promenading below.

Photo by Reutlinger, Paris

CARMEN DEVILLERS

“Gil Blas,” First Prize Beauty]

Most diminutive of them all is the “Théâtre des Capucines,” whose auditorium is no larger than a private salon. This _intime_ playhouse is frequented by the most exclusive audience to be found in Paris. Before the curtain rises it resembles a drawing-room filled with a society gathering for amateur theatricals. The walls of yellow brocade, with a delicate decoration of nasturtiums, gives it even more the air of a private drawing-room, and the tiny stage seems to have been erected for the occasion. Only when the curtain rises is the illusion dispelled, for at the Capucines the short comedies are rendered by many of the most celebrated players of the French stage.

Here the great Gémier plays “Daisy,” in which his portrayal of a race-track thief, jealous over his sweetheart Léa (Mademoiselle Carlier), is a masterpiece of character acting.

Other little comedies, like “Au Temps des Croisées,” by Guy de Maupassant, with Gallo in the principal rôle, and Viviane Lavergne and Max Dearly in “Chonchette,” with charming Thérèse Berka, leave little to wonder that the tiny Théâtre des Capucines is crowded nightly with the most intelligent of Parisian society.

I found my old friend the Baron after the play at Pousset’s beginning his midnight supper of “_écrevisses_” and beer, alone and in a grumbling mood.

“_Ah! Ah! tant mieux!_ It is you, _mon ami_,” he cried. “Good, we shall have supper together. It is fortunate that I find you. Do you know,” he continued, motioning me to a seat beside him, “I have this evening been to such a bad play, _Diable!_ It is a relief to get here. To rinse the eyes, as we say, from such a gloomy _histoire_! One goes to the theater to laugh, is it not, eh? Not to have what you call him—zee, zee blues.

“For three hours, my friend,” he continued, frowning at the memory of it, “for three hours, _imaginez-vous_, I have been following a lot of unhappy people into the horrors of Siberia. Those who survived until the last act were finally put to death or separated brutally from those dear to them. Many of them were blind. The heroine was forced to betray her lover, who was finally led to execution before her eyes. _Sapristi!_” and the Baron pounded his great fist on the table. Then, choking with laughter over the humorous side of it so that he dropped his monocle, he continued:

“It is to this I go to be amused, _mon Dieu_! I would rathzair be at a funeral!”

Here the garçon interrupted us with the cognac.

“Tell me, Baron,” I said, as we lighted our cigars, “what, in your opinion, has made the _bouis-bouis_ become so popular with you Parisians? I have just come from the Capucines. It was not gloomy there, I assure you; the little house was as gay as a tulip patch and bubbling over with merriment.”

“Listen,” replied the Baron, putting his forefinger to his forehead impressively. “The success of the little theaters with short plays comes from the fact that nowadays a crisis has been reached in theatrical affairs. The public, as it is after all for them that plays are given, have put the author at his wits’ end to invent something new. The old actors who are too sure of themselves have become careless, and the young ones, in trying to create a personal _genre_, end in attaining a _pose_ which, through its affectation, is always lacking in art.

“Then there are the critics, who are always watching for ‘the little beast,’ as we say, and who seem to discover only elephantine faults, and finally there are the directors of the theaters, who are constantly torn between their desire to please the public, satisfy the actor, protect art, and fill their purses.”

“It is different with us,” I replied; “we have syndicates in charge of our amusements. The personal desires of the players are not considered, and the managerial head of the enterprise rarely knows or cares about art.

“It is purely a business with him, like the running of a series of big dry-goods stores, and so he hustles out on the road his companies number one, two and three, and sits twirling his thumbs in his office computing how much cash they will bring him back.

“And what were the conditions which brought this crisis you speak of?” I asked, returning to the main subject.

“Ah, then you have not heard,” he replied, “of the investigation made by Messieurs Allard and Vauxelles, who addressed themselves to the directors of the principal theaters: Messieurs Porel, Claretie, Antoine, _et al._, and to authors like Brieux and Hervieu. They explained clearly where the trouble lies. In the first place, it is a fact that the growing popularity of outdoor sports in France constitutes a real danger for the theater. The love of physical exercise, of bicycling, automobiling, of field sports and ballooning, increases daily with us.

“It is excellent for the muscles, but when one has steered one’s “tuff-tuff” all day or been driven through the clouds in a balloon, the tired sportsman is in no condition nor frame of mind to enjoy in the evening a serious play. Is it not so? It is imbecile to expect it of him.

“Notice,” he went on, “that I am speaking of the Frenchman upon whom physical exercise has more effect than on the Anglo-Saxon who has been accustomed to it from his youth. With our impetuosity we overdo things. Besides, the athlete is not a good spectator, for what is won for the biceps is lost for the brain.

“What our good man of the world returning from a hard day’s sport must have, is either his bed, or a light, gay _revue_ with perfect brain rest during it. So he dines late and goes to the circus, or to the performance of a _revue_, or to one of the small theaters, or to the _bouis-bouis_, where the lightest of farce comedies sends him home in a good humor. These latter miniature theaters have become so popular with us that nearly every _quartier_ now has its _bouis-bouis_. They have sprung up like weeds and steal an important part of the audience of the serious theaters.

Photo by Stebbing, Paris

A POPULAR STAR OF A REVUE]

“Then, too, the modern comforts we find in our restaurants and other public places are lacking in our playhouses, whose interiors have remained unchanged for more than half a century, and where one is badly seated or stifled in a stuffy box. Again, the theater proper, once the most moderate-priced of amusements, has become with us so expensive that most bourgeois families or the average Parisian cannot afford to go.

“Besides, in the serious theaters the _entr’actes_ have become interminably long, the acts ridiculously short. We begin to have enough, too, of what we term _pornographie_; of plays full of salacious intrigue and of moral degeneracy, which most of our young authors seem to revel in, and which they call ‘a slice of life (_une tranche de vie_).’” He added earnestly:

“The Parisian wants gay plays, clever vaudeville, or little comedies full of sparkling wit and humorous situations. The Parisian wants it all the more because the stage lately has been too much under the influence of foreigners like Ibsen, Sudermann, Hauptmann, Tolstoy and the rest.” And the Baron added, with a wink:

“It is, after all, an eternal exchange. They have taken from us what we have taken from them. The Romantic school has nourished them, Georges Sand has deeply influenced Russian literature. The type of the Ibsenian woman is Georges Sand’s ‘Lélia’; even the last play of Dumas, that ‘Route de Thèbes,’ shows the influence of Ibsen. Dumas imitated Ibsen, but remained himself. These foreign writers are the sons of our French _romantiques_, who themselves were the sons of Schiller and Goethe, just as they in turn were the sons of the eighteenth century and were descended from Diderot and the Encyclopedists.

“But the public revolts against all this modern pessimism,” continued my friend—“against Monsieur Hervieu, for example, because he tries to prove in his plays that the stage of to-day is less pessimistic than of old. But he can say all he wishes,” affirmed the Baron, warmly, “and the dramatic world may insist that it used to be even sadder, that the old playwrights made people die, that Camille was dead! that the ‘Femme de Claude’ was dead! that the theaters in bygone days were sumptuous slaughter-houses, becoming veritable battle-fields by the fifth act, as in ‘L’Étrangère,’ ‘La Princesse George,’ and so many others. But what do you want?” the Baron went on. “The public like it better, for when the people in the play are killed off once and for all, the good spectator has no more to worry over.” And the Baron pushed aside his _écrevisses_.

“Everything is settled! nothing to think about,” he continued. “What fault then do the public find in the modern plays? It is not that they finish badly, but that they do not finish at all!

“The ‘dénouement’! Ah! There is a word,” cried the Baron, “that has the gift of exasperating all our young authors. They cannot resign themselves like Augier, Dumas and Sardou, to see on the stroke of midnight the hero marry the heroine and virtue get its reward.

“All this is to them old-fashioned. The dénouement of Denise makes them smile, and Francillon, whose heroine hasn’t really deceived her husband, seems to them a farce. So, to finish in a newer way, they do not finish at all. _Voilà!_ It is simpler, _Hein!_ but confess that it isn’t any more difficult!

“It is this which depresses the bourgeois, who has come to the theater to amuse himself. He comes out at the end of the play with one more worry on his conscience. He leaves pensive and saddened and oppressed by the gloominess of it all.

“In ‘L’Envers d’une Sainte,’ François de Curel sends his heroine back to her convent, and Henry Becque ends ‘Les Corbeaux’ by a marriage which makes you foresee a loveless life of misery and oppression. And the proof of the growing distaste for these sad plays is, that when they played ‘Ties’ at the Français lately, they felt obliged to give at the end a little play in one act full of gaiety, so as to dry the eyelids and expand the chest of all those who were going to bed.”

The hour had grown late, the café was deserted, and the Baron’s _écrevisses_ had become cold. Outside two nighthawk cabs stood waiting for a chance trip. Fog rose from the slime of the boulevard.

“Come and dine with me to-morrow night at the Café Anglais,” said the Baron, as he tucked up the collar of his coat and entered his cab, “and we will go up to the Rabelais and see ‘Le Corset de Germaine.’”

You must not judge the Théâtre du Châtelet by the melodramas which accompany the gorgeous spectacles given there; where the ballets are superb and the arts of scenic painting and stage mechanism are seen in their perfection.

The melodrama I saw at the Châtelet concurrent with the spectacle in twelve acts and twenty tableaux, was written especially for the chief actor. The hero finds himself, as the curtain rises, in the interior of India, where he soon falls in love with a beautiful princess, Zuléma by name, the only daughter of a rich sheik.

It is love at first sight with Zuléma and the hero, and, before the orchestra had played through a dozen bars, the lovers make hasty plans for an elopement, taking with them Zuléma’s faithful maid.

The flight of the happy pair is fraught from that time on with an exciting series of hairbreadth escapes, but these little incidents do not seem to trouble the hero, he being constantly occupied with his personal appearance.

In the second act the hero led the princess, still in the jeweled tea-gown she wore when they met, up to the last barricade of an elaborately carved oriental city, which is besieged by the English.

Here the hero bids the princess and her maid sit down while he rolls a cigarette, and incidentally picks off with his gun, rested on the sill of a convenient window, the leaders of the advancing army.

During all this fighting his gray leather leggings remain as spotless as the flowing silk scarf heaving over his manly chest, sunburned by adventure. All of which win for him not only the heart of the beautiful Zuléma, but of every other fellow’s sweetheart throughout the depth and breadth of the broad gallery.

At last the trio reach a ravine. As yet none of the princess’s jewels have been stolen; she still wears the décolleté tea-gown and keeps her manicured nails well polished. In the ravine, behind a papier-maché rock, Zuléma discovers her irate father, who, having been hot-footed up hill and down dale by the bloodthirsty _Anglais_, is glad enough to come out of his hiding place to give his blessing to the eloping pair, and bestow upon the powdered neck of his only child a talisman—whereupon our hero pounds his chest and swears to revenge their pursuers.

An old friend of mine who knows Fourteenth street better than I do tells me that most of the spirit mediums who rent a residence along it during the season when Coney Island is frozen over, never call upon a lesser personage for a spirit answer than Napoléon Bonaparte! For who would pay two dollars to hear Uncle John’s opinion of his only living relative? It is surprising that the great Napoléon should make a beeline for Fourteenth street before even going to wash up at the club. But he does. “Ting-a-ling-a-ling,” goes the bell, and the head of the First Empire tells from behind a turkey-red curtain all he knows as precisely as a museum dwarf does his age. And so it is with our hero when he stumbles across a witch in the ravine, who happens to be occupied at the time in boiling a purée of certain poisonous herbs. She gives him a morsel of her stew, which he straightway puts in his upper pocket, and becomes as invulnerable against the bullets of the popping enemy as a Sandy Hook target in front of a popgun. They fairly rattle off him. The princess thinks it nothing short of Providence, and says so. She and her serving-maid occupy themselves with their fancy work at the bottom of the secret fastness while our hero with the magnetic eye peers over an adjoining rock, and the father of the fair Zuléma up stage keeps sharp watch of the enemy from beneath the folds of his voluminous cloak.

And so the day passes and night comes on apace and the stars glitter in pairs in the canvas heavens. No sound breaks the stillness of the night save the creepy titter of violins in the orchestra.

Photo by Reutlinger, Paris

MLLE. YAHNE OF THE THÉÂTRE ATHÉNÉE]

Now the ravine goes black as a solio print in the sun, and then pales to violet. The ballet has begun. In swinging rhythm a hundred shapely _coryphées_ glide and pirouette towards the footlights, withdrawing among the pillars of a golden temple to give place to a hundred others advancing.

These ballet girls are French and can dance.

Calcium lights sizzle and hiss from the gallery and from the upper boxes. Simultaneously, their violet screens change with a click to azure, now to gold. Carmanillo, the _première danseuse_, is whirling in a circle as Amardi taught her to do so well years ago in Milan. When Carmanillo dances she scarcely seems to touch the stage, but when she walks on the flat of her feet, as all ballet women do, she has the awkward gait of an acrobat.

A veil midway down the vast stage lifts, disclosing an oriental city. A cortège of slaves advances, followed by another line of _coryphées_. Behind this barrier of grace and color, come the retinue of a barbaric court, gorgeously costumed, and headed by white Arabian horses, caparisoned in turquoise and gold. The favorite of the Sultan is borne past, reclining on a crimson velvet litter.

A second veil lifts, disclosing in the hazy distance the limits of the city; spires, domes and minarets are bathed in a glow of golden light. The depth of the great stage has been reached, and in reality it is nearly the length of a Parisian block. Upon the topmost pinnacle of this apotheosis of color stands a woman, nude, her hair glittering in jewels.

In the royal box before which the cortège has passed rests the hero for whom the fête has been given. He is still in his spotless leggings. He accepts the homage of the conquered city condescendingly. With him it is a nightly matter of fact. The fair Zuléma is by his side. Her maid has had time to don a Paris hat, but Zuléma clings to her tea-gown and gazes in adoration at the hero. A delicious waltz swells up from the orchestra. The stage is swarming now with whirling, kicking _coryphées_; more horses clatter in over planking, followed by more swaying palanquins; the scene resembles a kaleidoscope of ever changing color, costume and light.

Trumpets blaze from the ramparts of the city, a red fire burns in the wings, and down comes the curtain.

Such is the Châtelet.

As a spectacle it is as perfect as the best choreographic brains can make it.

Half an hour later, in a nearby café, I came across the hero and Zuléma slaking a tropical thirst with two tall steins of beer. The beautiful princess carried her stage shoes with her, wrapped in a newspaper. Presently I caught sight of the faithful maid hurrying to a _cabinet particulier_ upstairs with a gentleman in a silk hat and a fur-lined overcoat. I afterwards learned that the maid and Zuléma did not speak.

Alas, all is not gold that glitters!

Chapter Four

BARS AND BOULEVARDS

There was a certain coziness about the “Bar du Grillon.” It was well named, this “Bar of the Cricket,” for, tho a public resort, it was thoroughly homelike.

The walls of the tiny room were of polished cherry, and masses of Jacqueminot roses adorned the bar.

Every day its charming proprietress, Madame Lucille de Bréville, stepped from her brougham, passed through the screen doorway, deposited the contents of the money-drawer in her golden purse, made a memorandum of it with a little turquoise-topped pencil which hung from her châtelaine, gave an extra touch to her wavy hair in a tiny mirror, and straightway became the most gracious of hostesses to a dozen old friends who dropped in during the afternoon and dined at eight.

A pretty woman is difficult to describe, but Lucille de Bréville was more than pretty; she was beautiful, exasperatingly so. It might have been the curve of her white throat, or the merriness in the depths of her violet eyes, or the grace of her matured and exquisite figure which gave her charm, for Lucille possessed all these. Better still, she had a heart of gold and a clever brain, both of which won for her many comrades who were too fond of her to make love to her. Lucille had had many love affairs. That was one reason why she became at thirty quite a serious proprietress of the Bar du Grillon. The pin money which it brought her gave her an interest in life, for most French women seem to inherit a little of the bourgeois blood of the _commerçants_. With her pin money she could do as she pleased; with her annuity it was different. There was always an accounting accompanying that. At thirty, Lucille had sold most of her jewels and with the proceeds founded a private charity, and had settled upon a frail old aunt who adored her a yearly amount sufficient to keep her in modest comfort to the end of her days.

Individually the habitués of the Bar du Grillon were interesting.

There was an aged Countess who came regularly, an amiable old lady, shriveled like a faded rose, the memoirs of whose sixty years would have filled a volume.

There was, too, a robust and jolly editor of a leading journal, a most polished gentleman of France, with a well-trimmed beard framing a countenance beaming with good humor.

Thirdly, there was the Count de X——, who spent most of his time before and after dinner in the only rocking-chair in the place, with Lucille’s two sleek-coated dachshunds curled contentedly in his lap.

Sometimes, on sunny days, the Count went to the races and with absent mind watched the horses win or lose for him. Upon days like these he would return to the bar late to find the rocking-chair occupied, and this is why he did not go to the track oftener. But whether he lost or won, whichever way the wheel of fortune spun for him, his outward manner preserved its even tenor. He was ever polished and agreeable. To him life had no new sensations, and he took it philosophically and with good grace. Perhaps the sole interest which he cherished was his deep affection for Lucille, but since many others among her old friends harbored the same feeling, to which she responded with the most exasperating of platonic friendships, the Count accepted the situation logically and retired to the rocking-chair to talk to the dachshunds.

The young Spaniard who sat at Lucille’s left at dinner accepted the situation less wisely. Often he burst forth beneath his breath with _Caramba!_ and other safety-valves of speech. Periodically he became desperate, and, since he could not lay his castles in Spain at her feet, he brooded over the thought of suicide, and would absent himself from the company for days, drinking heavily. Then he would return to the Grillon with the excuse that he had been at death’s door in his apartment. Tho he looked it, Lucille knew better and lectured him for his recklessness and especially for his intemperate habits, which she abhorred.

Another habitué was Mademoiselle Marcelle Dauval, who fell in love with an aeronaut and spent most of her time in balloons. When Marcelle was late for dinner the company wore an anxious air, took out their watches, poked their heads out of the door and surveyed the heavens through the slit of the narrow street. Often, as the dinner hour approached, the sky was black and full of scudding clouds, and the dinner would begin without her in silence born of anxiety. Then what joy when Marcelle arrived, her cheeks glowing from a rarer atmosphere than any of these sordid worldlings knew! “_Pâté de foie gras_, cold pheasant and _champagne brut_ at a height of two thousand meters! Eh, Hop!” and Marcelle gave a little scream at the memory of it. Often she navigated the big balloon herself, throwing out the sand and sprinkling the “Germans,” as she used to say, as they glided on long trips over a patch of the Fatherland. Or she would curl herself up in the creaky basket while her companion Jacques busied himself with his aerial observations.

The company would listen entranced to these recitals of the trim Marcelle’s daily experiences, and marvel at her fearlessness.

There was another genial comrade, Jeannette Brébant, whose forty odd years had left her frank, mannish and homely. There was no feminine pettishness to be found in Jeannette. She called a spade a spade, and dealt you whole shovelfuls of badinage, shook hands like a man and had a kind word for every one, even her old lovers. A well-groomed woman was Jeannette, with her Titian hair as neatly dressed at four o’clock as the smartest coiffeur in Paris could make it.

At eight, the faithful Louis, whose position as barkeeper and waiter made him indispensable, placed a Japanese screen in front of the door as a hint to warn intruders, pushed the three small tables together and laid the fresh cloth for dinner, bringing the vases of roses which had adorned the bar to the table. Lucille loved flowers, and a basketful of long-stemmed Jacqueminots came daily from the hot-house of her pretty place at Étretat, where Lucille rested during the hottest of the summer months when every Parisian who was able fled from the city.

Then Lucille closed the bar for its annual renovation and the faithful Louis was sent on a vacation to his family on the German frontier, where he rested from his cocktail-mixing and studied English, which he rarely had occasion to use and which was quite as bad as his French. The only thing American about this “American Bar” was the sign over the door, beneath which appeared a long list of American drinks with weird names, translated to him from a bartender’s guide published on the Bowery in the early sixties, not one concoction of which he had ever been able to mix.