At the end of the street where Noll and Betty had their lodging, the carpenters completed their task amidst wide-eyed wonder of inquisitive children and chatter of gossiping neighbours that stood at gaze along the pavement. The landlord of the little restaurant opposite called to the workmen to go and sit down at his tables and quench their thirst. The great slouching fellows needed no second bidding—indeed, they knew the liquor good, for the fat genial little host, Monsieur Charcot, had been plying them with tankards throughout the day, at every hint of heat or weariness, and the hints had not been few, urging them to push on, that he might get up his lanterns, and cover the stand with the red, white and blue stripes of France before darkness fell.
Beaming with hospitality, he now sallied across the road, two waiters at his side carrying paper lanterns and bundles of the nation’s flags; and the rickety bandstand was soon converted into as near a gorgeous opera-box as the limitations would allow.
Madame Charcot stood near, crying orders to the waiters, which nobody obeyed.
All the pretty blanchisseuses, bare-headed, were out along the curb, adding advice and merriment. The which brought out the shop-lads. There was kindly genial banter, and much talk and prophecy of dancing in the evening.
The old people stood about, smiling; and were raising reminiscences from the dead.
In the evening, Gaston Latour and Horace and the rest whooped to Noll and Betty to come down from their high lodging; and in a jovial party they wandered through the glowing streets of the illuminated city. All Paris was dancing. Under the gaudy paper lanterns the citizens were strolling, dancing, capering, laughing, singing—happy as children. And when the students, returning from their long evening’s promenading, came into the street where they lived, the bray and blare and shrill music of fiddle and trombone and cornet and flute, rending the rustling air with an old-time waltz-tune, told that the quarter was still dancing.
The youths and maids were dancing; the middle-aged were dancing; shop-folk and artisan; the old people were dancing.
Mine host, Monsieur Charcot, kicked a heel, blowing hard to keep the time with a young milliner to the pace of the ill-jigging waltz—the trombone being overfull of beer was inclined to sluggardy, whilst the fiddle had developed ambition under the heat of the wines of Italy to lead the music by more than an easy length. The trombone did well, doggedly thrashing the air with overwhelming beat of time, save when he hiccupped, when confusion would threaten. All the little sempstresses and washer-girls were stepping it, swinging round in the whirl with the grocer lads and the youths of the quarter, petticoats a-whirl. The pasty-faced and sullen young workman Hiéne, in his best clothes, was jumping through the measure with Madelaine, who had given old widow Snacheur the slip. And now the melancholy-visaged Gaston Latour seized the plump concierge about the height a waist had once been, and Madame Hodendouche, but mildly protesting, found herself flung off her feet and swept into the revolving whirl, well-pleased enough to be in the social eddy....
All in the street danced out the night, the same tune serving more than thrice—indeed, the call for new airs had started an unseemly brawl between the fiddle and the trombone on the art of Wagner, which had only been washed out in Chartreuse. So they got to jigging it again to the old limping harmonies. They were not over-critical. They had all grown up together, had danced out the national fête together through the warm summer evening in the ruddy glow of the orange-paper lanterns to the like halting music since they could well remember. Thus they now footed it, until the white light of the coming day crept over the eastern roofs and snuffed out the orange glow of the candles that guttered in the lanterns’ sockets, and sent them all to their beds. The early midsummer sun that came a-peeping into the town lit silent thoroughfares in a drowsy city.
The arisen sun ascending into the high firmament saw the students thronging to the railway-stations, with scanty baggage and uproarious souls, to spend the hot days in country places or by the sea—a cheery boisterous crew, good-tempered, chaffing, frankly jovial.