wistful diableries? What if no more the old Vachette of the Boul'
Mich' and the Rue des Ecoles, last of the _cafes litteraires_, once the
guzzling ground of Voltaire and Rousseau and many such another profound
imbiber? What if no more the simple Montmartroise of other times, and in
her stead the elaborate wench of Le Coq d'Or, redolent of new satin and
parfum Dolce Mia? Other times, other manners--and other girls! And if,
forsooth, Ninette and Manon, Gabrielle and Fifi, arch little mousmes of
another and mayhap lovelier day, have long since gone to put deeper soul
into the cold harps of the other angels of heaven, there still are with
us other Ninettes, other Manons and other Gabrielles and Fifis. "La vie
de Boheme" is but a cobwebbed memory: yet its hosts, though scattered
and scarred, in spirit go marching on. The Marseillaise of romance is
not stilled. In the little Yvette whose heart is weeping because the
glass case in the Cafe du Dome this day reveals no letter from her so
grand Andre, gone to Cassis and there to transfer the sapphire of the
sea and mesmerism of roses to canvas, is the heart of the little Yvette
of the Second Empire. In the lips of Diane that smile and in the eyes of
Helene that dream and in the toes of Therese that dance is the smile, is
the dream, is the dance in echo of the Paris of a day bygone.

Look you with me into the Rue de la Gaite, into the
Gaite-Montparnasse, still comparatively liberated from the intrusion of
foreign devils, and say to me if there is not something of old Paris
here. Not the Superba, Fantasma Paris of Anglo-Saxon fictioneers, not
the Broadwayed, Strandified, dandified Paris of the Folies-Bergere and
the Alcazar, but the Paris still primitive in innocent and unbribed
pleasure. And into the Bobino, its sister music hall of the common
people, where the favourite Stradel and the beloved Berthe Delny,
"_petite poupee jolie_," as she so modestly terms herself, bring the
grocer and his wife and children and the baker and his wife and children
temporarily out of their glasses of Bock to yell their immense approval
and clap their hands. I have heard many an audience applaud. I have
heard applause for Tree at His Majesty's in London, for Schroth at the
Kleines in Berlin, for Feraudy at the Comedie Francaise, for Skinner at
the Knickerbocker--and it was stentorian applause and sincere--but I
have never heard applause like the applause of the audience of these
drabber halls. The th