AT A FÊTE FORAINE
And so he lurched on towards his pets, singing a song of cheer. He reached his menagerie before daylight. His keepers, snoring peacefully in their bunks, did not hear him as he stumbled in through a hole in the tent and proceeded to the row of cages. A lioness, wakened out of her sleep, recognized him, and pacing to the end of her cage, peered out at him. He must have presented a strange sight, for she roared twice, half waking the other animals. Then my friend did a foolish thing; he stumbled up the steps of the trained bear’s cage, apologized to the steps for tripping over them, slipped the spring latch and entered the den. Taking his hat off politely to the bear who, at his unexpected entrance, rose on her hind legs, Champeaux fell into her arms.
“Pepita,” he said, “I have had a good time, a good time, old girl,” and he slapped her enthusiastically on her scrubby neck.
Pepita squealed, embraced him in turn, as if in sympathy, and looked at him queerly with her small round eyes. Then Champeaux groaned—Pepita had broken his ribs.
In America the roof of the three-ring circus holds a network of trap apparatus upon which a dozen aerial performers exhibit at the same time. In the first ring there is a bareback act, in the second a juggling family upon an intermediate stage, and in the third ring a herd of trained elephants. Over the surrounding race-track twenty clowns play tag, setting small sections of the amphitheater into roars of laughter as they pass.
All this is typical with us of the “greatest show on earth.”
Parisians delight in the circus as much as we do, but they are content in seeing one thing at a time and enjoying it.
Here the cirques are as cozy as theaters and one small ring suffices. The Nouveau Cirque, whose façade on the rue St. Honoré resembles that of a music-hall, is the most comfortable of all the Parisian circuses, and, like the Cirque d’Hiver and the Cirque Médrano, is open the year round. The patronage of the last two is more bourgeois than that of the first one, for both are situated in thickly populated quarters.
The Médrano, on the boulevard Rochechouart in Montmartre, and the Cirque d’Hiver, on the boulevard du Temple, are patronized for the most part by the people of the rue du Temple and around la Place de la Bastille.
All Paris pours to Longchamp the day of the Grand Prix. Seen from the grandstand, the track stretches away in a velvety green ribbon. Every square foot of the remainder of the vast enclosure is packed with people. Part of this human sea, that which fills the grandstands and broad promenade, is gay in the smartest of toilettes, silk parasols, and shining top hats. The rest is made up of all sorts and conditions.