this time: they have
only to collect the sous, and the wild revelry begins. The tallest man
in the room leads on to the floor the shortest woman--a little
humpbacked dwarf: he is smoking a cigar, and she a cigarette, and they
dance with fury while puffing clouds of smoke. The man jumps in the
air with wondrous pigeon-wings, slaps his heels with his hands, shouts
and twists his lank body into grotesque shapes. The little dwarf,
madly hilarious, rushes about with her head down, swings her long
dress in the air, whirls and "makes cheeses," and in the climax of her
efforts kicks her partner squarely in the back amid roars of laughter.

Across the way from this ball-room there is a large "brewery," as it
is called--a combination of beer-hall, wineshop, cafe and
billiard-room--where for eight cents you may play a game of billiards,
or for twelve cents may play an hour. Beer is four cents the glass,
and wine two cents, for in Paris wine is cheaper than beer. Blousards
crowd this place at all hours of the night.

Near by is a cafe concert. A "Grande Soiree Lyrique" is the
entertainment offered us at the Maison Doucieux, as we learn from the
rudely-written handbill which hangs at the entrance. Through a long,
winding, narrow, dark and dirty passage, up a rickety stone staircase,
through another passage, and we stand in a crowded hall, at whose
lower end a rude stage is erected, on which a ragged man is bawling a
comic song. In the midst of it there is a disturbance: a drunken man
has climbed upon the back of a seat to light his pipe at the
chandelier, and falling thence has enraged the fallen-upon to that
extent that a fight ensues. In a twinkling the tipsy man is dragged
out of the door, to the delight of the audience, who shout "Bravo!"
as he disappears. The concert is not entertaining, and we follow him
out. He is carefully propped up against a wall by those who put him
into the street, and when we come upon him is growling maledictions
upon his enemies, with his hair about his eyes and his hands clawing
the air. Four bareheaded women, roaring with laughter, come marching
abreast along the middle of the street, and picking up the drunkard's
battered hat disappear in the gloomy distance, boisterously thrusting
the hat upon each other's heads in turn.

A cafe chantant of a more pretentious sort than the Maison Doucieux,
but still the peculiar resort of the blousard--for there are cafe
chantants of many grades in Paris--may b