La Goulue unearthed for me from the bottom of a trunk some of her past glory: a set of photographs taken by a smart photographer during the time of her favor, and a framed certificate of a first prize for dancing bearing the date 1889, and the seal of the judges of the award.
She also brought to light a contract to dance for three thousand seven hundred and fifty francs a week. The document bore the signature of a notary and the stamp of the French government.
Meanwhile the lions in the fourth cage roared, and the sad bear, made happy with his morning ration of mush and milk, buried his nose in the pail, muzzle and all, and forgave his mistress for changing her métier.
Next to the panthers’ cage the week’s wash hung drying in the sun. Some of it was coquettish.
Ah! my friend, if you complain of the responsibility of having a family on your hands, remember it is not a patch to having a menagerie on your hands, even without the cumbersome elephant.
“To show” inside the fortifications costs dearly—six hundred francs rental for a place in any of the fêtes foraines. The law prohibits single exhibitions which are not a part of the regular fêtes foraines, and these take place only at stated intervals in the different quarters of the city. They are the Foire aux Pain-d’Epices, the Fête de Neuilly, the Fête des Invalides, the one surrounding the bronze lion of Belfort, and other smaller ones along the Boulevards Vaugirard, Pasteur, Garibaldi, Grenelle, and Rochechouart, and the Fête of La Chapelle. The still smaller fêtes outside of Paris do not pay well. Meanwhile the animals have to be fed, pay or no pay.
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith
BEHIND THE SCENES