n dancing hall. We enter the hall about midnight.
Dancing is going on to the music of a good orchestra. A thick cloud of
smoke obscures the lamps and prevents us at first from distinguishing
the details of the scene. It is only during an interval that we can
make a closer examination. Most of the people are masked, dress coats
and ball dresses are exceptional.

"But what do I see? This lady in rose tarlatan, who has just
pirouetted before us has a cigar in her mouth and smokes like a
trooper. She has also a small beard, half hidden by paint. And she is
now talking to an "angel" in tights, very _decollete_, with bare arms
crossed behind her, also smoking. They have men's voices and the
conversation is also masculine, for it turns on 'this cursed tobacco
will not draw.' Two men dressed as women!

"A clown in conventional costume leaning against a pillar is speaking
tender words to a ballet dancer, with his arm round her waist. She has
a Titian head, a fine profile and good figure. Her brilliant earrings,
her necklace, her shapely shoulders and arms seem to proclaim her sex,
when suddenly disengaging herself from the embracing arm she turns
away with a yawn, saying in a bass voice, 'Emile, why are you so
tiresome to-day?' The novice hardly believes his eyes: the ballet
dancer is also a man.

"Becoming suspicious, we continue our investigations, beginning to
think that the world is here upside down. Here is a man who comes
tripping along; but no, it cannot be a man, in spite of the small and
carefully curled mustache. The dressing of the hair, the powder and
paint on the face, the blackened eyebrows, the gold earrings, the
bouquet of flowers on the breast and shoulder, the elegant black gown,
the gold bracelets, the fan held in a white-gloved hand--none of these
things suggest a man. And with what coquetry he fans himself; how he
dances and skips about! Nevertheless, Nature has created this doll in
the form of a man. He is a salesman in one of the large sweet shops,
and the ballet dancer is his colleague!

"At the table in the corner there is a convivial meeting; several
elderly gentlemen are gathered round a group of very _decollete_
'ladies' sitting over a glass of wine and cracking jokes which are
anything but delicate. 'Who are these three ladies?' 'Ladies! laughs
my better-informed companion; well, the one on the right with the
brown hair and short fancy dress is a hair-dresser; the second, the
blonde with the pea