The mountebank fled: a few days later he was arrested at Lille.
I was lately discussing this tragic accident with M. François, and my friend, who was drawing on his riding-boots, paused in the effort to utter these melancholy words:—
“We were certainly happier under the old régime.”
When one is satiated with the abnormal and monstrous, the thoughts naturally tend towards those entertainments which exhibit the perfection of human beauty.
It must be admitted that in this respect the public taste has improved. The infantine and Oriental admiration which the crowd displayed for enormous women, the “fat lady” who weighed 250 lbs., is declining so quickly [p071] that the “colossus” has nearly disappeared from the fair. And really pretty girls are now exhibited in the “Halls of Mystery.”
[p072] The success of the “Beautiful Fatma,” hastened this revolution. No fair of any importance is now held without some imitation of the “Beautiful Fatma” being on the ground. I noticed the Pavillon Marocain amongst the most successful of these imitations.
“Walk in, walk in! ladies and gentlemen,” cries the showman at the top of his voice; “walk in and see the danse du ventre, as danced at Bardo before the Bey of Tunis! Walk in, walk in! Hurry up!”
We enter. The booth is clean and prettily decorated; at one end three women in Oriental dresses are singing a harsh melody accompanied by the traditional thrumming on the bamboo drums, which look like butter pots. They are called, if names are asked for, Aïcha, Dora, and Hardiendja. But there is a Fatma in the house. She is a negress about twenty years old, a fine specimen of her race: at its base the nose is almost as wide as her thick lips, and by this detail Fatma shocks all our ideas of classic proportions; still, when looking at this tall, well-made girl, I, for the first time, understood what travellers mean when they speak of the beauty and exquisite grace of negro women. In spite of all defects there is a pleasant harmony in the dark face, brightened by the modest mischievous eyes. And when Fatma dances before the negro Bouillabaisse,—first comic actor to the Sultan of Zanzibar,—her graceful swaying movements, her languid attitudes and smiling gestures rouse in her audience that innate sympathy with Oriental views of women, the gentle, soulless creature of the East, which lies dormant in the heart of every man.
