They sat down, conscious of themselves, and ordered a bottle of Ayala, presently served to them in goblets to play the rôle of wine-glasses—for one drinks champagne from goblets in Montmartre—and looked down at the dancers on the floor below. From its balcony at the other end of the hall a brass band was sending forth a whirlwind of quadrille music, and in the centre of the ballroom eight women danced the can-can. They were large women, some of them rather fat, and none of them rather young. They wore wide straw hats and simple tailored shirtwaists and dark skirts of a cut almost severe; but in sharp contrast to this exterior, when they danced, they displayed incredible yards and yards of lace petticoat and stockings that outshone the rainbow.
"What do you think of it?" asked Stainton.
Muriel condemned the Bal Tabarin as she had condemned Boussingault.
"I think it's horrid," she replied. "Aren't they ugly?" But she did not take her eyes from the dancers.
All about the dancing-floor, except in that large circular clearing for the performers, were little tables where men and women sat and drank beer and smoked cigarettes. Along one side was a long bar at which both sexes were served. Everyone gave casual heed to the dancing; everyone applauded when he was pleased and hissed when he was not. Now and then a young woman would rush to a neighbouring table, seize upon a man and guide him madly about one corner of the floor in time to the music, and now and then it would be a young man that seized upon a woman, at which the patrons, if they paid any attention at all to it, smiled good-naturedly. At one of the most conspicuous tables were a couple kissing above their foaming beer-mugs, and nobody seemed to notice them. Clearly, this was a world where one did as one pleased, and, so long as one did not trespass upon the individuality of another, none objected.
"Something new, isn't it?" asked Jim, rather dubiously.
"It's unbelievable," said Muriel, her face flushed.
"Shall we go?"
"No—we might as well wait a little while—until we've finished our champagne."
The quadrille ended. There were ten minutes during which the visitors to the place waltzed rapidly, with feet lifting high, about the floor. Down the centre two young girls were swaying together in a form of waltzing that neither of the Americans had ever seen before. A man and a woman, dancing, would embrace violently at every recurrence of a certain refrain.