All this happened a day ago; before noon Wednesday, Paris had been swept as clean as a whistle.
Alas! the famous Bal Masqué de l’Opéra is no more in its splendor.
The bal masqué to which once upon a time all of gay Paris went in domino and mask is now filled by the daughters of concierges, by barbers and jockeys and a general riff-raff, most of whom have entered by billets of favor. Besides these there are a few dominoed ladies in the boxes who may once have graced the ball in the old days, and now and then a pretty woman in black silk tights passes through the foyer, and is ogled by the remnant of the aged roués who stroll about comparing the present with the glitter and beauty of the Opéra ball when it was one of the sights of the world, frequented by the most celebrated and beautiful of women. All this has gone; the crowd is motley, noisy and common. The leading feature at the Opéra ball this year was the cake-walk, over which all Paris has suddenly gone mad.
It is an amusing sight to see the Parisian dance it; he forms his ideas of the cake-walk mostly from some of the exaggerated illustrations published in the London journals, and combines these with a touch of plantation grace taken from the steel engravings out of a French history of early Alabama.
I know a celebrated French ballet master who has had his hands full training Parisians in the art of cake-walking. As a maître de ballet there is none better to be found, but his ideas upon the innate grace of “Syncopated Sandy” are somewhat vague.
Chapter Nine
IN PARISIAN WATERS
Madame Thérèse Baudière’s brown eyes and the pink-and-white freshness of her skin are in charming contrast to her gray hair, which she wears in the coiffure of a certain marquise of a century ago. Sometimes on fête days, madame encircles her white throat with a black velvet ribbon. Upon these occasions, she mostly resembles the Watteau-like marquise whose portrait hangs in the inn adjoining Madame Baudière’s garden. A seasoned old hostelry is the inn, famous for its vintages and its sauces, both of which go far toward cheering the stranger who comes to Poissy.
This quaint town upon the bank of the Seine would be a drowsy little hamlet indeed were it not so close to Paris that its cobbled streets are filled on Sundays and holidays with tuff-tuffs and formidable red racers, which rattle and roar in their endeavor to stand still long enough to deposit their dust-begrimed occupants at the door of Monsieur Dalaison’s inn, the Esturgeon. For it is quite the thing for Parisians to take their Sunday déjeuner or dîner at this hostelry.