Part 13

Near the fireplace, upon a low platform, was a piano; grouped about it were four typical Bohemians of lower Bohemia; they wore loads of hair; their faces had a dissipated look, their fingers were heavily stained by cigarettes; they wore beards and négligé black cravats. These were all minor poets, and they took their turn in singing or reciting their own compositions, afterwards making a tour of the crowded tables with a tin cup and collecting the sous upon which they lived, and roundly cursing those who refused to contribute.

Bishop was so delighted with the pictures on the walls that he proceeded to examine them, but the bully with the stick thundered,--"Sit down!" and shook his bludgeon menacingly. Bishop sat down.

Then the brute swaggered up to us and demanded,--"What the devil do you want to drink, anyway? Speak up quick!" When he had brought the drinks he gruffly demanded, "Pay up!" Upon receiving the customary tip he frowned, glared at us with a threatening manner, and growled, "Humph! _c'est pas beaucoup!_" and swept the money into his pocket.

"Goodness! this is an awful place!" exclaimed Mr. Thompkins under his breath. He seemed to fear being brained at any moment. Retreat had been rendered impossible by the locking of the door.

We were prisoners at the will of our jailer, and so were all the others.

The great Bruant himself sat with a party of congenial Bohemians at a table near the piano and fireplace; they were drinking bocks and smoking cigarettes and long-stemmed pipes. On the wall behind them was a rack holding the pipes of the habitués of the _café_, mostly broken and well browned. Each pipe was owned by a particular Bohemian, and each had its special place in the rack. The other tables held a general assortment of lesser Bohemians and sight-seers, all cowed and silent under the domination of the bawling ruffian with the stick. Whenever he smiled (which was rare, a perpetual frown having creased a deep furrow between his eyes) they smiled also, in great relief, and hung upon every word that his occasional lapses into an approach to good nature permitted him to utter.

The poets and singers howled their productions in rasping voices, and put a strain upon the strength of the piano; and the minor Bohemians applauded them heartily and envied them their distinction.

In the midst of this performance there came a knock upon the door. The bully walked up to the wicket, peered out, and admitted an elderly gentleman, accompanied by a lady, evidently his wife. These the habitués greeted with the following song:

"Tout les clients sont des cochons--

La faridon, la faridon donne.

Et surtout les ceux qui s'en vont--

La faridon, la faridon donne."

The gentleman, somewhat abashed by this reception, hesitated a moment, then sought seats. The two had hardly seated themselves when the burly ruffian with the stick began to recite a villanous poem reflecting upon the chastity of married women, emphasizing it with atrocious side remarks. The gentleman sprang from his seat in a rage and advanced threateningly upon the brute, who stood leering at him and taking a firmer hold upon his stick; but the visitor's wife caught the outraged man by the arm and restrained him. A wordy war ensued (for the gentleman was a Frenchman), in which the choicest argot of Montmartre and La Villette was exhausted by the ruffian. He closed by shouting,--"You were not invited to enter here. You asked the privilege of entering; your wish was granted. If you don't like it here, get out!"

The gentleman flung down a franc upon the table, the bolts were withdrawn, and he and his wife passed out while the roysterers sang,--

Tout les clients sont des cochons," etc.,

amid the laughter of the smaller Bohemians.

Aristide Bruant now rose from his table and strode to the centre of the room. A perfect silence fell. He is rather a small man, slender, and of delicate build; he has a thin, sallow face, with piercing black eyes, prominent cheek-bones, and long raven-black hair falling over his shoulders from beneath a broad black slouch hat down over his eyes. His unbuttoned coat showed a red flannel shirt open at the throat; a broad sash was about his waist; his trousers were tucked into top-boots,--the ensemble reminding one of Buffalo Bill. He glared sullenly round upon the people, and then sprang lightly upon a table. From that perch he recited one of his poems, selected from his book of songs and monologues. It does not bear reproduction here. For that matter, being written in the argot of Montmartre, it could hardly be understood even by French scholars unfamiliar with Montmartre.

Happily Mr. Thompkins understood not a word of it, smiling perfunctorily out of politeness while Bruant was uttering things that might have shocked the most hardened Parisians. There were several young women present, and while Bruant was reciting they ogled him with genuine adoration. The other poets hung reverently upon his every word.

A mighty burst of applause greeted the finish of the recitation; but Bruant slouched indifferently to his seat, ignoring the ovation. The bully with the stick immediately stopped the noise by yelling, "Silence!" This he followed up with the contribution-cup for the benefit of the idol of Montmartre. With the cup he brought the volume of Bruant's poems from which he had given the recitation,--a cheaply printed pamphlet. No one dared refuse to buy, and no change was returned. Was not this the great Aristide Bruant, the immortal of Montmartre?

He was followed by other poets with songs and the banging of the piano. We presently rose to leave, but the bully shouted,--"Sit down! How dare you insult the young poet who is now singing?" We submissively resumed our seats. After a while, in a lull, we respectfully rose again, and the bully, shouting, "Get out!" unbarred the door and we were free.

Mr. Thompkins was more deeply puzzled than he had been before that night. He could not understand that such a resort, where one is bullied and insulted, could secure patronage.

"But this is Paris, Mr. Thompkins," explained Bishop, somewhat vaguely; "and this particular part of Paris is Montmartre."

Midnight was now close at hand, but Montmartre was in the height of its gayety. Students, Bohemians, and cocottes were skipping and singing along the boulevard,--singing the songs of Bruant. The _café_s were crowded, the theatres and concert halls only in the middle of their programmes. Cabs were dashing about, some stopping at the Moulin Rouge, others at the Elysée Montmartre, still others picking up fares for more distant attractions.

Bishop halted in front of a quiet-looking house with curtained windows, and bluntly asked Mr. Thompkins if he would like to go to church. Mr. Thompkins caught his breath, and an odd, guilty look came into his face. But before he could make reply Bishop was leading the way within. The interior of the place certainly looked like a church,--it was fitted to have that significance. The cold, gray stone walls rose to a vaulted Gothic ceiling; Gothic pillars and arches and carved wood completed the architectural effect; statues of saints appeared in niches, some surmounted by halos of lighted candles; and there were banners bearing scriptural mottoes.

The heavy oaken tables on the floor were provided with stiff, high- backed pulpit-chairs, beautiful in color and carving, and of a Gothic type, the whole scene suggesting a transept of Notre-Dame. Mr. Thomp- kins had reverently removed his hat. It was not long afterward that he quietly replaced it on his head. No notice was taken by us of these movements.

At the farther end, where the church altar belonged, was indeed a handsomely carved altar. Above it sprang a graceful arch, bearing a canopy beautifully painted in blue, with yellow stars. In the centre was a painting of Christ upon the cross. The altar was the bar, or caisse, of this queer _café_, and behind it sat the proprietress, quietly knitting and waiting to fill orders for drinks. The walls of the _café_ were almost entirely covered with framed drawings by Rodel; all were portraits of well-known Bohemians of Montmartre in characteristic attitudes,--the star patrons of this rendezvous. Many women figured among them, all Bohemian to the bone.

This was the Café du Conservatoire, famous for its celebrities, the poets of Bohemian Paris, among whom Marcel Legay is eminent. It was evident that the habitués of the Conservatoire were of a much higher order than those whom we had seen elsewhere.

They looked more prosperous, were more amiable, and acted more as other people.

True, there was much long hair, for that is a disease hard to shake off; but when it did occur, it was well combed and oiled. And there were many flat-brimmed "plug" hats, as well as collars,--clean ones, too, an exceptional thing in Bohemia, laundering being expensive. But the poverty-haunted Bohemians in the Soleil d'Or are more picturesque. That, however, is in the Latin Quarter: anything exceptional may be expected at Montmartre.

When we had finished our coffee we approached the patronne behind the bar, and bought billets for the Salle des Poètes at two francs each. This was a large room crowded with enraptured listeners to Legay, who was at that moment rendering his song.

LES CLOCHES.

"Les cloches Catholiques,

Du haut de leur beffroi,

Voyaient avec effroi

La résurrection des Grandes Républiques.

Les cloches rêvaient,

En quatre-vingt onze,

Les cloches de bronze

Rêvaient."

Legay had quite a distinguished appearance as he stood singing before the piano. He wore a generously cut frock-coat, and his waistcoat exposed a spacious show of white shirt-front.

His long hair was carefully brushed back, his moustaches neatly waxed; altogether he was dainty and jaunty, and the ladies in the room made no concealment of their adoration.

The accompanist was a picturesque character. He was forty-five or fifty years of age; he had long white hair and a drooping moustache, and his heavy protruding eyes were suffused with tears evoked by the pathos of the song. While he gazed up into the singer's face with tear-filled eyes he was in another life, another world, where there was nothing but music and poetry unalloyed to constitute his heaven. For Legay sang charmingly, with an art and a feeling that were never obtrusive; and his audience was aesthetic. When he had finished he was cheered without stint, and he clearly showed how much the attention pleased him.

His song was only one of the numbers on a very interesting programme. This was the training school of the young poets and song-writers of upper Bohemia; this was where they made their début and met the test of that discriminating criticism which decided them to advance upon the world or conceal themselves for yet a while from its cruel glare; and were they not but repeating the ordeal of the ancient Greeks, out of which so many noble things passed into literature? These critics were as frank with their disapproval as generous with their acceptance.

Among those who sang were Gustave Corbet, Marius Geffroy, Eugene Lemercier, Xavier Privas, Delarbre, and Henri Brallet, men as yet unknown, but likely to make a mark under the training, inspiration, and severe checks of the Café du Conservatoire. One of the goals for which these writers strive, and one that, if they win it, means to them recognition, is to have their poems published in _Gil Blas_, with illustrations by the peerless Steinlen, as are the works of Legay, and also of Bruant, le Terrible.

Marcel Legay is a familiar figure on the boulevards, where his dainty person is often seen after nightfall, hurrying to one or another of his haunts, with a small roll of music under his arm, and his fluffy hair streaming over his shoulders. On certain nights of every week he sings over in the Latin Quarter, at the Cabaret des Noctambules, Rue Champollion, near the Chapel of the Sorbonne.

The other singers that night at the Café du Conservatoire each affected his peculiar style of habit, gesture, and pose that he deemed most fetching. The entire programme was of songs: hence the name, Café du Conservatoire.

After we had deft, Bishop bought some Brevas cigars; thus fortified, we headed for the Moulin Rouge.

It was evident that Mr. Thompkins had reserved his enthusiasm for the great dance-hall of Montmartre,--Le Moulin Rouge,--with its women of the half world, its giddiness, its glare, its noise, its naughtiness.

Here at last we should find all absence of restraint, posing, sordidness, self-consciousness, and appeals to abnormal appetites. Mr. Thompkins visibly brightened as we ascended the incline of the entrance and came within the influence of the life and abandon of the place. Indeed, it must have seemed like fairy-land to him. The soft glow of hundreds of lights fell upon the crowds in the ball-room and balconies, with their shifting streams of color from the moving figures of dancing women in showy gowns and saucy hats, and its many chatting, laughing, joyous groups at the tables along the passage and the balconies, enjoying merry little suppers and varied consommations that kept scores of garçons continually on the move. A placard announced American Bar; American and English Drinks--as bald and unashamed as that. Here on high stools, American free-lunch fashion, ranged along the bar, were English and American tourists and French dandies sipping Manhattan cocktails with a cherry, brandy-and-soda, Tom-and-Jerry, and the rest. Along the walls hung vivid paintings of some of the famous dancing-girls of the Moulin, their saucy faces half hidden in clouds of lacy white skirts.

High up on a pretty balcony at the end of the huge ball-room were the musicians, enjoying their cigarettes and bocks between pieces. A small stage occupied the opposite end of the room, where a light vaudeville performance had been given; but that was all over now, and attention centred in the tables and the dancing.

The Moulin Rouge resembles very much the Bul-lier; but at the Moulin the cocottes are much more dashing and gaudy than over in the Quartier, because the inspector at the door of the Moulin maintains a more exacting standard on the score of the toilettes of the women whom he admits free of charge. Women, women, women! There seemed no end of them; and each was arrayed to the full limit of her means. And there were French dandies in long-white melton coats that were very tight at the waist, and that bore large brown-velvet collars; their hair, parted behind, was brushed toward their ears; they strolled about the place in numbers, twirling their moustaches and ogling the girls. And there were French army officers, Martinique negroes, longhaired students and Montmartre poets, artists, actors, and many three-days-in-Paris English tourists wearing knickerbockers and golf-caps, and always smoking bulldog pipes. There were also two parties of American men with their wives and daughters, and they enjoyed the spectacle with the natural fulness and responsiveness of their soil. For the Moulin is really now but a great show place; it has been discovered by the outside world, and, unlike the other quaint places mentioned in this paper, has suffered the change that such contact inevitably imparts. It is no longer the queer old Moulin, genuinely, spontaneously Bohemian. But the stranger would hardly realize that; and so to Mr. Thompkins it seemed the brilliant and showy side of Bohemian Paris. By reason of its change in character it has less interest than the real Bohemian Paris that the real Bohemians know, enjoy, and jealously guard.

Many light-footed young women were amusing circles of on-lookers with spirited dancing and reckless high-kicking; and, being adepts in their peculiar art, were so flashing and illusory that an attempt to analyze their movements brought only bewilderment. No bones seemed to hamper their swiftness and elasticity. The flash of a black stocking would instantly dissolve into a fleecy cloud of lace, and the whirling air was a cyclone; and there upon the floor sat the dancer in the "split," looking up with a merry laugh, flushed cheeks, and sparkling eyes, twinkling from the shadow of a twisted toque; then over her would sweep a whirlwind of other dancers, and identities would become inextricably confused.

An odd-looking man, with a sad face and marvellously long, thin legs in tights, did incredible things with those members; he was merely a long spring without bones, joints, or hinges. His cadaverous face and glittering black eyes, above which rose a top-hat that never moved from place, completed the oddity of his appearance. He is always there in the thickest of the dancing, and his salary is three francs a night.

We suddenly discovered Mr. Thompkins in a most embarrassing situation. A bewitching chemical blonde of the clinging type had discovered and appropriated him; she melted all over him, and poured a stream of bad English into his ear. She was so very, very thirsty, she pleaded, and Monsieur was so charming, so much a gentleman,--he was beautiful, too. Oh, Monsieur would not be so unkind as to remove the soft, plump arm from round his neck,--surely it did not hurt Monsieur, for was it not warm and plump, and was not that a pretty dimple in the elbow, and another even prettier in the shoulder? If Monsieur were not so charming and gracious the ladies would never, never fall in love with him like this. And oh, Monsieur, the place was so warm, and dancing makes one so thirsty!

Mr. Thompkins's face was a picture of shame and despair, and I have never seen a more comical expression than that with which he looked appealingly to us for help. Suppose some one in the hall should happen to recognize him! Of course there was only one thing to do. Mademoiselle Blanche's thirst was of that awful kind which only shipwrecked sailors, travellers lost in a desert, and _café_ dancing-girls can understand. And so four glasses of beer were ordered. It was beautiful to see the grace and celerity with which Mademoiselle Blanche disposed of hers, the passionate eagerness with which she pressed a long kiss upon Mr. Thompkins's unwilling lips, and the promptness with which she then picked up his glass, drained it while she looked at him mischievously over the rim, kissed him again, and fled.

Mr. Thompkins sat speechless, his face blazing, his whole expression indescribably foolish. He vigorously wiped his lips with his handkerchief, and was not himself again for half an hour.

Innumerable bright little comedies were unconsciously played in all parts of the room, and they were even more interesting than the antics of the dancers.

We presently strolled into the garden of the Moulin, where a performance is given in the summer. There stood a great white sheet-iron elephant, remindful of Coney Island. In one of the legs was a small door, from which a winding stair led into the body of the beast. The entrance fee was fifty centimes, the ticket-office at the top of the stair. It was a small room inside the elephant, and there was a small stage in the end of it, upon which three young women were exercising their abdominal muscles in the danse du ventre. Mr. Thompkins, dismayed at this, would have fled had not Bishop captured him and hauled him back to a conspicuous seat, where the dancing-girls, quickly finding him, proceeded to make their work as extravagant as possible, throwing him wicked glances meanwhile, and manifestly enjoying his embarrassment. Of course the dancers came round presently for offerings of sous.

We returned to the dance-hall, for it was now closing-up time, and in order to feel a touch of kinship with America, drank a gin fizz at the American bar, though it seemed to be a novelty to Mr. Thompkins.

The streets were alive with the revellers who had been turned out by the closing of the _café_s, dancehalls, and theatres, and the cries of cabbies rose above the din of laughter and chatter among the crowds. But the night was not yet quite finished. Said Bishop,--"We shall now have coffee at the Red Ass."

That was below the Place Pigalle, quite a walk down to the Rue de Maubeuge, through that suddenly quiet centre of artists' studios and dignified residences. At last we reached L'Âne Rouage,--the Red Ass. It has a small and unassuming front, except that the window-panes are profusely decorated with painted flowers and figures, and a red ass peers down over the narrow door. L'Âne Rouge has no special distinction, save its artistic interior and the fanciful sketches on its walls. It is furnished with heavy dark tables and chairs, and iron grilled into beautiful scrolls and chandeliers,--like the famous Chat Noir, near by. In fact, L'Âne Rouge resembles an old curiosity shop more than anything else, for it is filled with all imaginable kinds of antiques, blackened by age and smoke, and in perfect harmony. It, too, has its particular clientèle of Bohemians, who come to puff their long pipes that hang in racks, and recount their hopes, aspirations, achievements, and failures, occasionally breaking into song. For this they bring forth their mandolins and guitars, and sing sentimental ditties of their own composition. There is a charming air of chez soi at the Red Ass; a spirit of good-fellowship pervades it; and then, the _café_ is small, cosey, and comfortable, as well as artistic.

It was in a lively commotion when we crossed the threshold, the place being filled with littérateurs of the quarter. A celebration was in progress,--one of their number had just succeeded in finding a publisher for two volumes of his poetry. It was a notable event, and the lucky Bohemian, flushed with money, had settled his debts and was now treating his friends. Although we were strangers to him, he cordially invited us to share the hospitality of the occasion, and there was great applause when Bishop presented him with a Brevas cigar.

"_Bravo, les Anglais! Ce sont des bons types, ceux-là!_" and then they sang in chorus, a happy, careless, jolly crowd.

There was a small, thin young sketch artist making crayon portraits of the successful poet and selling them to the poet's friends for fifty centimes apiece,--with the poet's autograph, too.

In response to a call for une chanson Anglaise, Bishop sang "Down on the Farm" as he had never sung it before, his shining top-hat pushed back upon his curly hair, his jovial face beaming. At its conclusion he proposed a toast to the successful poet, and it was drunk standing and with a mighty shout.

We looked in at the Cabaret des Quat'z' Arts,--a bright and showy place, but hardly more suggestive of student Bohemianism than the other fine _café_s of the boulevards.

And thus ended a night on Montmartre. We left Mr. Thompkins at his hotel. I think he was more than satisfied, but he was too bewildered and tired to say much about it.

Montmartre presents the extravagant side of Parisian Bohemianism. If there is a thing to be mocked, a convention to be outraged, an idol to be destroyed, Montmartre will find the way. But it has a taint of sordidness that the real Bohemianism of the old Latin Quarter lacks,--for it is not the Bohemianism of the students. And it is vulgar. For all that, in its rude, reckless, and brazen way it is singularly picturesque. It is not likely that Mr. Thompkins will say much about it when he goes home, but he will be able to say a great deal in a general way about the harm of ridiculing sacred things and turning reverence into a laugh.

MOVING IN THE QUARTIER LATIN

THE Quartier Latin takes on unwonted life about the fifteenth of July, when the artists and students change their places of abode under the resistless pressure of a nomadic spirit.