A FLOAT IN THE CORTÈGE DE VENUS AT THE MOULIN ROUGE
This may seem a fantasy, but it is precisely what has happened, and if you don’t believe it ask the policeman.
These petites femmes of the Butte glide by with the quickness of an area cat. They are reckless, strong, and fearless, these noctambules. The eyes of Fanchette burn brilliantly in their sockets. Her lips are scarlet with a hasty dab of rouge. The rest of her visage is as pale as Pierrot’s. When you look at her with your eyes half closed, you seem to see her skull.
Claudine enters the “Abbaye de Thélème” at midnight, the pleats of her white silk petticoat spread out with the pride of a fantail pigeon.
Drawing by Galaniz
UP THE RUE BLANCHE
She wears a scarlet jacket studded with polished brass buttons that catch the light as she moves. The costume is a nouveauté from the Montmartre bazaar which has excited the envy of every other Mimi and Cora along the Boulevard de Clichy since Wednesday, when Claudine became the duchess of Montana. This title was bestowed upon her by a broad-shouldered cow-puncher of our far West, who insisted upon the title and dressed her according to his ideas of how a duchess “oughter look.” A scarlet hat with a green feather flames upon her head, and her feet are encased in new gray suede slippers whose high heels do good service in elevating the lady to her suddenly exalted position. On her thumb she wears a ruby ring, a gift from her cowboy admirer.
Lélise glides into the “Nouvelle Athénée,” a café whose clientèle is made up of soberer habitués.
She is pretty, this Lélise, a nervous little blonde with the merriest of blue eyes, and the pink of neatness, her clothes being fashioned in the best of Parisian good taste.