Paris, February 9, 1802.
Vive la danse! Vive la danse! seems now to prevail here universally over "Vive l'amour! Vive la bagatelle!" which was the rage in the time of LA FLEUR. I have already informed you that, in moments the most eventful, the inhabitants of this capital spent the greater part of their time in
DANCING.
However extraordinary the fact may appear, it is no less true. When the Prussians were at Châlons, the Austrians at Valenciennes, and Robespierre in the Convention, they danced. When the young conscripts were in momentary expectation of quitting their parents, their friends, and their mistresses to join the armies, they danced. Can we then wonder that, at the present hour, when the din of arms is no longer heard, and the toils of war are on the point of being succeeded by the mercantile speculations of peace, dancing should still be the favourite pursuit of the Parisians?
This is so much the case, that the walls of the metropolis are constantly covered by advertisements in various colours, blue, red, green, and yellow, announcing balls of different descriptions. The silence of streets the least frequented is interrupted by the shrill scraping of the itinerant fiddler; while by-corners, which might vie with Erebus itself in darkness, are lighted by transparencies, exhibiting, in large characters, the words "Bal de Société."—"Happy people!" says Sterne, "who can lay down all your cares together, and dance and sing and sport away the weights of grievance, which bow down the spirit of other nations to the earth!"
In summer, people dance here in rural gardens, or delightful bowers, or under marquees, or in temporary buildings, representing picturesque cottages, constructed within the limits of the capital: these establishments, which are rather of recent date, are open only in that gay season.
In winter, the upper classes assemble in magnificent apartments, where subscription-balls are given; and taste and luxury conspire to produce elegant entertainments.
However, it is not to the upper circles alone that this amusement is confined; it is here pursued, and with truer ardour too, by citizens of every class and description. An Englishman might probably be at a loss to conceive this truth; I shall therefore enumerate the different gradations of the scale from the report of an impartial eye-witness, partly corroborated by my own observation.
Tradesmen dance with their neighbours, at the residence of those who have the best apartments: and the expense of catgut, rosin, &c. is paid by the profits of the card-table.
Young clerks in office and others, go to public balls, where the cavalier pays thirty sous for admission; thither they escort milliners and mantua-makers of the elegant class, and, in general, the first-rate order of those engaging belles, known here by the generic name of grisettes.