As the poet and I descended the Butte together, all Paris lay spread out in the evening glow below us.
It lay like a vast gray sea sparkling and phosphorescent with tens of thousands of lights. Far below, away in the twilight, jutted the spires of Notre-Dame; to the right rose the Opéra, square and massive like a tomb.
I thought of Marcelle’s paradise perched in the pure air above the reek and filth that hung like a miasma about the base of the Butte, and what it meant to her as a refuge from the smoke and stifling air of cabarets and cafés-concert.
We kept on through the alleys of streets, zig-zagging our way down the Butte, and turned the corner of the Cabaret des Assassins. A kerosene lamp burned in the greasy kitchen, from the door of which a hag of a woman appeared and screeched at us as we passed:
“Bonsoir!”
It was in midwinter one misty morning in January when I revisited the primitive village upon the summit of Montmartre. This time I chose for my trail a back street which led me up to the ancient Cabaret of the Assassins, now known under the name of the Lapin Agil. The cabaret, a squat, sordid two-story structure, stands upon a solitary corner of the Butte, forming an angle with the rue Saint Vincent and the rue des Saules. Overlooking Paris below, a back window glared in the light of the chill morning from beneath an overhanging eave, like the eye of a murderer in hiding. The place as I entered was silent and deserted except for the individuals who kept it.
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith
A MISTY MORNING IN THE RUE DES SAULES
A girl of fifteen addressed me in a timid voice as I entered the low-ceiled buvette adjoining the cabaret. She wore a massive marriage ring. She seemed somewhat frightened and suspicious, as tho I were a government detective armed with a warrant.