The “Bal Bullier” was founded in 1847; previous to this there existed the “Closerie des Lilas” on the Boulevard Montparnasse. You pass along with the line of waiting poets and artists, buy a green ticket for two francs at the little cubby-hole of a box-office, are divested of your stick by one of half a dozen white-capped matrons at the vestiaire, hand your ticket to an elderly gentleman in a silk hat and funereal clothes, at the top of the stairway sentineled by a guard of two soldiers, and the next instant you see the ball in full swing below you.
There is nothing disappointing about the “Bal Bullier.” It is all you expected it to be, and more, too. Below you is a veritable whirlpool of girls and students—a vast sea of heads, and a dazzling display of colors and lights and animation. Little shrieks and screams fill your ears, as the orchestra crashes into the last page of a galop, quickening the pace until Yvonne’s little feet slip and her cheeks glow, and her eyes grow bright, and half her pretty golden hair gets smashed over her impudent little nose. Then the galop is brought up with a quick finish.
“Bis! Bis! Bis! Encore!” comes from every quarter of the big room, and the conductor, with his traditional good-nature, begins again. He knows it is wiser to humor them, and off they go again, still faster, until all are out of breath and rush into the garden for a breath of cool air and a “citron glacé.”
And what a pretty garden it is!—full of beautiful trees and dotted with round iron tables, and laid out in white gravel walks, the garden sloping gently back to a fountain, and a grotto and an artificial cascade all in one, with a figure of Venus in the center, over which the water splashes and trickles. There is a green lattice proscenium, too, surrounding the fountain, illuminated with colored lights and outlined in tiny flames of gas, and grotto-like alcoves circling the garden, each with a table and room for two. The ball-room from the garden presents a brilliant contrast, as one looks down upon it from under the trees.
But the orchestra has given its signal—a short bugle call announcing a quadrille; and those in the garden are running down into the ball-room to hunt up their partners.
The “Bullier” orchestra will interest you; they play with a snap and fire and a tempo that is irresistible. They have played together so long that they have become known as the best of all the bal orchestras.
The leader, too, is interesting—tall and gaunt, with wild, deep-sunken eyes resembling those of an old eagle. Now and then
he turns his head slowly as he leads, and rests these keen, penetrating orbs on the sea of dancers below him. Then, with baton raised above his head, he brings his orchestra into the wild finale of the quadrille—piccolos and clarinets, cymbals, bass viols, and violins—all in one mad race to the end, but so well trained that not a note is lost in the scramble—and they finish under the wire to a man, amid cheers from Mimi and Céleste and “encores” and “bis’s” from every one else who has breath enough left to shout with.