Seen through the trees the Théâtre Marigny looms like some gigantic flower of light, the reflection from the edge of its circular promenade illuminating in a hazy light the surrounding foliage. And such a promenade!—aglow with fairy lamps thrust in a setting of shining leaves, and with comfortable rattan chairs encircling the mosaic floor which during the intermission is brilliant with the passing throng.
“Mar-ga-rita” sing gayly the Neapolitans to the strum of guitars. A woman with an olive skin whose lithe body seems to have been poured into a delicate mold of Valenciennes lace, glides by on the arm of a Russian. Her jewels have bankrupted a prince.
Sundry old Frenchmen, in straight-brimmed hats with ribbons in their button-holes, pass; one is a senator, another a famous sculptor. At one’s elbows is a pretty blonde, her white neck encircled by a band of turquoise reaching nearly to her small pink ears, ever listening like tiny shells to the flattering murmur of the human sea about her.
Pop! goes a bottle of champagne in the bar. Crack! rips the spangled train of Thérèse Derval under the clumsy heel of her admirer. “Fifty louis for your awkwardness, idiot!” snaps the quick-tempered Thérèse.
“Mar-ga-rita” strum the guitars. But the bell is ringing for the curtain. The spectacular revue following the excellent variety is quite different from the revues of the other café concerts; at the Marigny they are poems of color—costumes which are the creation of artists. Nowhere is scenic art brought to a higher perfection than at the Marigny.
One sees a ballet in tones of violet and gray that is as delicate as an orchid. Again the stage is blazing in Spanish yellow and red as rich as a pomegranate crushed in the sun. Now the tableau changes to a scenic night bathed in pale moonlight with a ruined château harboring purple shadows and framed in a grove of cypresses.
From this grove may flutter a ballet of bats, or the summer night may vanish in a twinkling and in its place appear a garden of Maréchal Niel roses blooming at a signal into another ballet.
Now enters a procession representing the history of fashion. Here are the exaggerated costumes of the Middle Ages, ermine and miniver, and those impossible head-dresses, the cornettes, hennins, and escoffions of the time of “Louis the Fair.” Then follow the grand apparel of the Medicis, and the transparent sheath-like tunics of the merveilleuses of the Directory, slit at the side and fastened with a cameo brooch, and the toilettes of the balls of the Restoration. Even more ridiculous costumes were worn, you remember, by women of society a hundred years ago openly in this very Champs-Élysées, the days when all Paris went mad over the costumes of the Athenian maidens. What a contrast are the creations of the present age to those seen during the Reign of Terror at Frascati’s! And yet I am sure that if any of the celebrated beauties of the Marigny had entered the court of Louis XVI. in a perfect gown of to-day, she would have been welcomed with wonder and delight.
The curtain falls on the revue, smart equipages outside are being shouted for by the chasseur. Julie la Drôlesse has just stepped in her boudoir-like coupé. It has begun to drizzle. I call my own conveyance, a dingy fiacre with a green light and a jingly bell, the cocher swathed about his middle with a yellow horse-blanket. He wheels his raw-boned steed to the door.