ded with cocaine and absinthe, monotonous in
his virtuosity, playing the accordion. He had begun before we arrived
and he continued after we left. I like to think of him as always
playing, but it is not so....

As for the dancers, they were of various kinds and sorts. The women
had that air which gave them the stamp of a quarter; they wore loose
_blouses_, tucked in plaid skirts, or dark blue skirts, or
multi-coloured calico skirts (if you have seen the lithographs of
Steinlen you may reconstruct the picture with no difficulty) and they
danced in that peculiar fashion so much in vogue in the Northern
outskirts of Paris. The men seized them tightly and they whirled to
the inexorable music when it was a waltz, whirled and whirled, until
one thought of the Viennese and how they become as dervishes and
Japanese mice when one plays Johann Strauss. But in the dances in
two-four time their way was more our way, something between a
one-step, a mattchiche, and a tango, with strange fascinating steps of
their own devising, a folk-dance manner.... Yes, under their feet, the
dance became a real dance of the people and, when we entered into it,
our feet seemed heavy and our steps conventional, although we tried
to do what they did. (How they did laugh at us!) And the strange
youth emphasized the effect of folk-dancing by playing old _chansons
de France_ which he mingled with his repertory of _cafe-concert_ airs.
And there was achieved that wonderful thing (to an artist) a mixture
of _genres_--intriguing one's curiosity, awakening the most dormant
interest, and inspiring the dullest imagination.

This was my first night at a _bal musette_ and my last in that year,
for shortly afterwards I left for Italy and in Italy one does not
dance. But the next season found me anxious to renew the adventure, to
again enjoy the pleasures of the _bal musette_. I have said I was
perhaps wrong in recalling the street as the Rue Jessaint, or perhaps
the old _maison_ had disappeared. At any rate, when I searched I could
not find the _bal_, not even the bar. So again I appealed for help,
this time to a chauffeur, who drove me to the opposite side of the
city, to the _quartier_ of the _Halles_.... And I was beginning to
think that the man had misunderstood me, or was stupid. "He will take
me to a cabaret, l'Ange Gabriel or"--and I rapidly revolved in my mind
the possibilities of this quarter where the _apaches_ come to the
surface to feel the purse of