e walls and pillars in every direction. Here are gathered a great
number of men and women, sitting at the tables, drinking beer and
wine, playing cards, dominoes and backgammon, and filling the air with
the incessant din of conversation and the smoke of pipes and cigars.
The women are generally bareheaded or in muslin caps. The men are
almost without exception in blouses--some white, some black, some in
the newest stages of shiny blue gingham, some faded with long wearing
and frequent washing. Caps and soft hats are universal: a tall hat is
nowhere to be seen--a fact which is much more significant in Paris
than it would be in America, for in Paris the tall hat is almost _de
rigueur_ among the better classes. Girls from sixteen to twenty years
of age stroll in from the street bareheaded with the cool manner of
boys, quite alone and unconcerned, looking around quietly to see if
there is any one they know: in case of recognizing an acquaintance
they perhaps sit down to a game or stand with hands in pockets and
converse. They have not the air of _nymphes du pave_, and are simply
grisettes (working-girls), passing away their idle hours in precisely
the same independent way as if they were of the opposite sex. For the
price of the glass of beer which he orders when he sits down (six
cents) the blousard can sit here all night, playing cards and smoking.

It is one o'clock in the morning when we leave this scene, and the
place is in full blast. Crossing the Chateau d'Eau, we plunge into a
quiet street, down which comes a flood of light from an electric lamp
hung before the entrance of the Tivoli Waux-Hall. Within, the
ball-room is thronged. An occasional blouse is visible, but the
blousard who comes here is generally arrayed in some fancy costume,
which he hires for the night for a trifling sum or has devised in his
leisure moments from odds and ends gathered in an old-clo' market.
There is a group of four now prancing in a quadrille, who are
blousards enjoying at once their hours of ease and of triumph. Emulous
of the "artists" of grander balls, they have got themselves up in the
guise of American Indians, and are a sight to behold. Their faces are
painted every color of the rainbow; and when I say painted I do not
mean tricked out with the red and white of toilet-boxes, but daubed
thickly with the kind of paint used in painting houses and
signs--paint which _stays_ in spite of the reeking perspiration which
trickles off their