cheeks. They wear no masks, but have pasteboard
noses stuck upon their faces with glue, for they are "got up" for all
night, and this is the proud scene on which they win laurels. Their
dance is a coarse imitation of the gyrations of the professional
cancanists, and they prance and cavort with glowing enthusiasm, happy
in the evident admiration of a surrounding throng of provincials,
pickpockets and prostitutes.

For a more genuine scene of blousard gayety come with me to the Rue
Mouffetard, where there is a ball frequented solely by the lowest and
poorest class of Paris strugglers for bread, such as the ragpickers
and the street-sweepers. At first thought it seems improbable that the
squalid wretches who can barely earn sous enough to live on, to whom
fifty cents a day are fine wages, should have a ball. But all things
are possible in Paris in the way of popular amusements. In the Rue
Mouffetard, then, near the Rue Pot de Fer, we read on the wall of a
gloomy building a yellow advertisement which is translatable thus,
literally:

GREAT HALL OF THE OLD OAK.

MOUFFETARD STREET, 69, HOUSE OF LACROSSE,

_All the Sundays, departing from the first January, up till
Fat Tuesday_.

BALL OF NIGHT!

DRESS, MASK, DISGUISE.

A Grand Orchestra, composed of Artists of Talent, will be
conducted by G. Maurage, who will have performed a Repertory
entirely new, composed of Quadrilles, Valses, Polkas,
Schottisches, Varsoviennes, Mazurkas, Redowas, Lancers, etc.

ENTRANCE--On the Sundays, five cents; at ordinary times, four
cents. One commences at 8 o'clock.

Although one commences at eight o'clock on the bills, one does not
commence in reality at any such unfashionable hour. If we are so
innocent as to go to the ball-room before ten o'clock, we shall find
only a crowd of boys and girls gathered about the entrance of the
hall, waiting to see the guests arrive. Needless to say, no carriages
roll up to this door. The revelers come on foot, emerging from dark
alleyways, descending from garrets by creaking old staircases,
filtering out one by one into the street, and making their way to the
ball-room in couples or alone. To find the ball in the full tide of
successful operation we should arrive about half-past ten in the
evening. Entering then through a long, broad passage, midway of which
we deposit five sous each with the Cerberus on guard, we pass into a
hall crowded with people.