e from her pocket and lit a cigarette. It would not have
seemed a desperate deed in proper England where every other woman had
begun to smoke in public, probably more in public than in private, for
with many smoking was part of the "New Woman" crusade--"I never liked
smoking," an ardent leader in the cause told me once, "but I smoked
until we won the right to." France, or Salis, however, still drew a
rigid line that refused women the same right in France, and with the
American's first whiff he was bidding her good-night and politely, but
firmly, showing her the door.

A third night, and I do not know that it was not the most amusing, the
end of our journey was Bruant's _Cabaret du Mirliton_, in the remote
_Boulevard Rochechouart_. I daresay there was not one of us who did not
own a copy of Bruant's _Dans la Rue_, but we had bought it less because
of his verses--some of us had not read a line of them--than because of
Steinlen's illustrations, and I can still hear Harland upbraiding us for
our literary indifference and urging it as a duty that we should not
only read Bruant's songs, but go at once to hear him sing them. Harland
had the provoking talent of looking as if his stories were the last
thing he was bothering about, as if he was too busy enjoying the
spectacle of life to think of work, when he was really working as hard
as the hardest-working of us all. And as it was not very long after that
his _Mademoiselle Miss_ appeared, I have an idea that he hurried us off
to Bruant's not solely to improve our literary taste, but quite as much
to collect incidents for that gay little tale.

[Illustration: Poster by Toulouse-Lautrec
ARISTIDE BRUANT OF THE CABARET DU MIRLITON]

Bruant ran the _Mirliton_ on the principle that the less easily pleasure
is come by, the more it will be prized. There was no walking in as at
the ordinary _cafe_, no paying for admission as upstairs at the _Chat
Noir_. Instead, it amused him to keep people who wanted to get in
standing outside his door while he examined them through a little
grille, an amusement which, in our case, he prolonged until I was sure
he did not like our looks and would send us away, and that the reason
was the responsibility he laid upon us all for the frock coat and top
hat which the Architect could never manage to keep out of sight, skulk
as he might in the background. But, of course, Bruant had no intention
of sending us away and he kept up his little farce only to the