s through the ceremony
of undressing, smokes, gossips, criticises, is looked up to as an
authority, and has never yet been seen off the platform. Then there's
that bald man in the white robe--his name's Giroflet--a retired
stockbroker. Well, that fellow robes himself like an ancient Roman, puts
himself in classical attitudes, affects taciturnity, models himself upon
Brutus, and all that sort of thing; but is as careful not to get his
feet wet as a cat. Others, again, come simply to feed. The restaurant is
one of the choicest in Paris, with this advantage over Vefour or the
Trois Freres, that it is the only place where you may eat and drink of
the best in hot weather, with nothing on but the briefest of _calecons_"

Thus chattering, Mueller took me the tour of the bath, which now began to
fill rapidly. We then took possession of two little dressing-rooms no
bigger than sentry-boxes, and were presently in the water.

The scene now became very animated. Hundreds of eccentric figures
crowded the galleries--some absurdly fat, some ludicrously thin; some
old, some young; some bow-legged, some knock-kneed; some short, some
tall; some brown, some yellow; some got up for effect in gorgeous
wrappers; and all more or less hideous.

"An amusing sight, isn't it?" said Mueller, as, having swum several times
round the bath, we sat down for a few moments on one of the flights of
steps leading down to the water.

"It is a sight to disgust one for ever with human-kind," I replied.

"And to fill one with the profoundest respect for one's tailor. After
all, it's broad-cloth makes the man."

"But these are not men--they are caricatures."

"Every man is a caricature of himself when you strip him," said Mueller,
epigrammatically. "Look at that scarecrow just opposite. He passes for
an Adonis, _de par le monde_."

I looked and recognised the Count de Rivarol, a tall young man, an
_elegant_ of the first water, a curled darling of society, a professed
lady-killer, whom I had met many a time in attendance on Madame de
Marignan. He now looked like a monkey:--

.... "long, and lank and brown,
As in the ribb'd sea sand!"

"Gracious heavens!" I exclaimed, "what would become of the world, if
clothes went out of fashion?"

"Humph!--one half of us, my dear fellow, would commit suicide."

At the upper end of the bath was a semicircular platform somewhat
loftier than the rest, called the Amphitheatre. This, I learned, was the
plac