s carriage--a large closed landau, whose coachman, a sturdy,
handsome fellow, sat waiting impassively on his box--was down below, they
started off.

The Chamber of Horrors was installed in premises on the Boulevard de
Rochechouart, formerly occupied by a cafe whose proprietor had become
bankrupt.* It was a suffocating place, narrow, irregular, with all sorts
of twists, turns, and secluded nooks, and a low and smoky ceiling. And
nothing could have been more rudimentary than its decorations. The walls
had simply been placarded with posters of violent hues, some of the
crudest character, showing the barest of female figures. Behind a piano
at one end there was a little platform reached by a curtained doorway.
For the rest, one simply found a number of bare wooden forms set
alongside the veriest pot-house tables, on which the glasses containing
various beverages left round and sticky marks. There was no luxury, no
artistic feature, no cleanliness even. Globeless gas burners flared
freely, heating a dense mist compounded of tobacco smoke and human
breath. Perspiring, apoplectical faces could be perceived through this
veil, and an acrid odour increased the intoxication of the assembly,
which excited itself with louder and louder shouts at each fresh song. It
had been sufficient for an enterprising fellow to set up these boards,
bring out Legras, accompanied by two or three girls, make him sing his
frantic and abominable songs, and in two or three evenings overwhelming
success had come, all Paris being enticed and flocking to the place,
which for ten years or so had failed to pay as a mere cafe, where by way
of amusement petty cits had been simply allowed their daily games at
dominoes.

* Those who know Paris will identify the site selected by M. Zola
as that where 'Colonel' Lisbonne of the Commune installed his
den the 'Bagne' some years ago. Nevertheless, such places as the
'Chamber of Horrors' now abound in the neighbourhood of
Montmartre, and it must be admitted that whilst they are
frequented by certain classes of Frenchmen they owe much of
their success in a pecuniary sense to the patronage of
foreigners. Among the latter, Englishmen are particularly
conspicuous.--Trans.

And the change had been caused by the passion for filth, the irresistible
attraction exercised by all that brought opprobrium and disgust. The
Paris of enjoyment, the _bourgeoisie_ which held all wealth and power,
w