It was always the policy of the French government to see that the people were sufficiently amused, and also to do every thing possible to attract strangers to the gay capital. Therefore, the theaters are the most gorgeous in the world, and as it would be impossible to maintain them from the admission receipts, the deficiencies are made up from the public treasury. The Grand Opera receives from the government nearly two hundred thousand dollars per year, and a number of other theaters receive like support, the entire amount thus paid aggregating something over six hundred thousand dollars per year. The citizen who may never see the inside of the Opera House is content with this, for it attracts to Paris the foreign sheep whose fleece is his living. Without the Opera the rich American would not come to Paris, and then what would trade be? The Parisian shopkeeper pays that tax willingly; and they pay their artists well, so as to have and keep the best. Any eminent tenor has a salary of twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars per annum; and other talent in proportion. It is not a bad thing to be a tenor in Paris. The salary is very comfortable.
In addition to the regular theaters there are numberless open-air concerts and variety performances in gardens, the spectators sitting on benches on the sand, the stage only being covered. These are always brilliantly lighted, and most artistically and profusely ornamented, and as attractive to the Parisian as to the stranger.
There is no entrance fee to these places. You wonder at the liberality of the proprietor, and say to yourself, if you could only find a hotel with similar views, you would immediately remove to Paris, and make it a permanent residence. But once inside, you find a pang in store for you. The free entrance is merely to evade some ordinance or other, and you are required to purchase refreshments, and no matter what it is, an ice or a glass of beer, the price is the same, three francs, or sixty cents, which makes really a high admission, even for Paris. It is the same as though a landlord should make no charge for his rooms, but compel you to pay two dollars for the privilege of getting into bed. Nowhere can something be had for nothing, and the more liberal it is at the beginning, the dearer it is at the ending.
But the chief delight of the middle and lower class of Parisians is the ball at night. There are scores and scores of gardens in every part of the city, immense enclosures, with a magnificent orchestra in the center, in which the Parisian dances and dances, seemingly never tiring. He stops now and then for a glass of wine, or the non-exhilarating syrup with which he lights his soul and ruins his stomach, if he has soul and stomach, but he seems to regret even this loss of time. The women are even more intoxicated with the dance than the men. A man may stop a minute and be easy, but the women chafe under the pauses in the music, and are impatient to be in motion.
There are gardens for the very poor, where the admission is a sou, or such a matter, for the men, and nothing for the women. The grounds outside are rather diminutive, and the ornamentation somewhat scanty, but the dancing floor is there and the orchestra likewise, and the blouses and calico enjoy themselves as thoroughly as the broadcloth and silk that frequent the higher priced places.
The Jardin Mabille, near the Champs Elysées, is the best known in Paris. It has world-wide celebrity, and no foreigner, no matter of what nation, ever leaves Paris without paying it, at least, one visit. It is a wondrously beautiful place, gorgeously illuminated with colored lights, and full to excess of trees, shrubbery, flowers and everything else that is beautiful. There are long walks, tortuous labyrinths, tables everywhere under trees, and it is filled with all sorts of attractions to take money from the visitor.
THE WICKED MABILLE.
The foreigner goes there to see the peculiar dancing, of which he or she has heard so much. The whole world knows of the can-can, and the whole world has heard of the frightfully immodest exposure of person visible at these bacchanalian orgies. I doubt if a youth ever left his native home in America that his mother did not exact a promise from him that he would not visit this horrible Mabille, which promise he gave, with, “Why, mother, do you suppose I would go to such a place? Never!” And then he went there the first time he was in Paris. He wasted no time.