CHAPTER XX.
HOW PARIS AMUSES ITSELF.
THE average Parisian thinks of but two things—how to get the wherewith to amuse himself, and how to get the most amusement out of that wherewith. I doubt if he ever thinks of any hereafter beyond to-night. His religion is admirably adapted to his nature. He is either a Catholic or an infidel. If a Catholic, a few minutes at the end suffices to fix him for the next world; if an infidel, death is annihilation, and therefore he proposes to have as much enjoyment as possible out of the present.
Paris would not be a good place for a series of revival meetings. The Parisian would jeer at the exhorters, and say, “Go to!”
Paris supports seventy theaters, good, bad, and indifferent. It is not fair to use the words “bad and indifferent,” with reference to the quality of acting, for there is no bad acting in Paris. It is as to the quality and material of the representations. They have all kinds, from the gorgeous Italian opera down to the small and cheap affairs in which burlesque comic opera of the funniest, and melodrama of the most lurid character is performed, for the especial delectation of the lower classes.
The theaters devoted to the melodrama are of the most melodramatic kind. There can be no crime too horrible for representation, and the situations cannot be too intense, or the plot too complicated. French life, like French cooking, must have any quantity of pepper in it.
A MELO-DRAMA.
About the least thrilling situation that would be considered good in these theaters would be the chopping up of the villain’s grandmother, and the roasting alive of a parcel of illegitimate children, to hide the consequences of a “damning crime.” There is always any quantity of blowing up of towers, of stabbings and shootings and bludgeonings, and all that sort of thing. There are secret passages in ancient castles, and paid cut-throats, and blue lights, and heroines with hair hanging down their backs, and everything pertaining to what in America is known as the “blood and thunder drama.”
One that I saw reminded me of an incident that happened at home many years ago. In a village in which I was residing, there came the usual strolling company of players of the olden time, the sad-faced men and wan women, who knew by actual walking all the various roads in the United States, to whom a good house would be a novelty that would make them uncomfortable. They had played to empty benches so long that they could not do well if living people occupied the seats.
I was fond of the drama, and the variety that we had there was better than none at all; so that I always patronized the strolling companies, attended invariably by a German physician who was quite as fond as myself of theatrical representations, and who, like myself, preferred a half loaf to no bread. We went together that night.
The play on the occasion was that cheerful drama from the French, “La Tour de Nesle.” The plot is variegated, to say the least. Margaret of Burgundy is afflicted with a desire for lovers, and she has a tower in which she receives them and holds her orgies. It is a pleasant thing to be invited to sup with the fair Margaret, while the supper lasts, but the pleasure doesn’t hold out. It is not continuous. For when you have bidden her good-evening, and get your hat on, you come across a trap door on which you step, and you go down several hundred feet, and alight on spikes situated conveniently in a bed of quick-lime, and your friends never know what has become of you; and if your life is insured there is always trouble about that, for there can be no proof of your death. Margaret loved amusement, but, for reasons, she desired no living witnesses of her escapades.