Gay life in Paris: how life is enjoyed by the people of that great metropolis

MULTUM IN PARVO LIBRARY.
Entered at the Boston Post Office as second class matter.
Vol. 2.
JUNE, 1895. Published Monthly.
No. 18.
How Life is Enjoyed by the People of that Great Metropolis.
Smallest Magazine in the world. Subscription price 50 cts. per year. Single Copies 5 cts. each.
PUBLISHED BY A. B. COURTNEY, Room 74, 45 Milk Street, BOSTON, MASS.
THE QUEEN OF THE MABILLE.
GAY LIFE IN PARIS.
There is an old Italian proverb, “See Naples and die,” but the French paraphrase it in a more pleasant way and say “See Paris and pray to live there until the end of the world.” It is with some of the females of Paris that we have to deal in this little book. Life in the great Metropolis is far different from the comparatively sober method of living in our American cities. A well known journalist says: “Men and women plunge into the lovely city as into a bath of pleasure, buffet with the breakers, float a brief time on the cosy sea of life there, and are then sucked down in the dark and sinister depths where ruin, disease and death lay in wait for the prey they are sure of in the end.” Of course this writer doesn’t mean that all men and women get into the evil way, but he does mean that a greater proportion are tempted by evil in Paris than in any other place.
The day of the Jardin Mabille went by several years yet, but the memories of it remain. The nearest approach to it, at present, is an establishment in the Latin quarter of Paris. The Mabille was a very elaborately and artistically arranged garden, a maze of thickets, odorous with flowers. It had an immense closed hall for winter use. Here once a week was held a masked ball which lasted from Saturday night to daybreak of the Sabbath. The wickedest dances, notably the can-can and the hula-hula, were invariably reserved for the closing hours of the affair. The women who frequented these balls were bad, yes, very bad, and they were met there by men in all walks of life. Even Napoleon III has visited this den of iniquity incognito. The writer of this had occasion to visit the Jardin Mabille and other similar places in Paris once in company with a detective. One of the notable dances seen was the bacchanal or wine dance. It is accompanied with the most astonishing sensational effects. The gas burns low, loud gongs bray dismally, cymbals clash, and the hall is brilliantly illuminated with red and blue and green fires, amongst which pistols are discharged and shrieks are heard in various parts of the room. Never was a madder scene enacted in real life than the bacchanal and the valentine on New Year’s eve. But is it real life after all, or is it only Paris and a kind of giddy dream? We, who come only to look on and to renew our feeble, but I trust virtuous, indignation at such sights, turn at last from the girls in boys’ clothes and the boy in girls’ clothes; from the jaunty sailor girl-boy who has just ridden around the room on the shoulders of her captain; from the Queen of Darkness who swept past us in diamonds and sables and never so much as suffered her languishing eyes to rest for a moment on any one of us; from the misery of the jealous one in the corner who has been robbed of his prize, and the melancholy of the two who are advising one another to go home, for they have each had more than enough; from all this we turn at last and find the streets blank and cold, and over the roofs comes the sound of bells that are calling the faithful to prayer.