burns, but that was
before I had heard of _stoppage_, a process by which the original
weave is cleverly counterfeited. And, wishing to dance, in Paris, I
have been guilty of visits to the great dance halls and to the small
smart places where champagne is oppressively the only listed beverage.
But that was before I discovered the _bal musette_.

One July night in Paris I had dinner with a certain lady at the
Cou-Cou, followed by cognac at the Savoyarde. I find nothing strange
in this program; it seems to me that I must have dined at the Cou-Cou
with every one I have known in Paris from time to time, a range of
acquaintanceship including Fernand, the _apache_, and the Comtesse de
J----, and cognac at the Savoyarde usually followed the dinner. This
evening at the Cou-Cou then resembled any other evening. Do you know
how to go there? You must take a taxi-cab to the foot of the hill of
Montmartre and then be drawn up in the _finiculaire_ to the top where
the church of Sacre-Coeur squats proudly, for all the world like a
mammoth Buddha (of course you may ride all the way up the mountain in
your taxi if you like). From Sacre-Coeur one turns to the left around
the board fence which, it would seem, will always hedge in this
unfinished monument of pious Catholics; still turning to the left,
through the Place du Tertre, in which one must not be stayed by the
pleasant sight of the _Montmartroises bourgeoises_ eating _petite
marmite_ in the open air, one arrives at the Place du Calvaire. The
tables of the Restaurant Cou-Cou occupy nearly the whole of this tiny
square, to which there are only two means of approach, one up the
stairs from the city below, and the other from the Place du Tertre. An
artist's house disturbs the view on the side towards Paris; opposite
is the restaurant, flanked on the right by a row of modest apartment
houses, to which one gains entrance through a high wall by means of a
small gate. Sundry visitors to these houses, some on bicycles, make
occasional interruptions in the dinner.... From over this wall, too,
comes the huge Cheshire cat (much bigger than Alice's, a beautiful
animal), which lounges about in the hope, frequently realized, that
some one will give him a chicken bone.... Conterminous to the
restaurant, on the right, is a tiny cottage, fronted by a still tinier
garden, fenced in and gated. Many of the visitors to the Cou-Cou hang
their hats and sticks on this fence and its gate. I have never seen