"AND TRANSFORM LONG-HAIRED STUDENTS INTO MEMBERS OF THE INSTITUTE"
"Possibly," the proprietor said, indulgently, and then wiped his brow and shook his head. He told us we had little idea how great were the trials of an impresario of an open-air theatre in the Champs Élysées. What with the rent and the cost of the costumes and the employment of three assistants—one to work the marionettes, and one to take up the money, and one to play in the orchestra—expenses did run up. Of course there was madame, his wife, who made costumes herself better than those that could be bought at the regular costumers', and that was a saving; and then she also helped in working the figures when there were more than two on the scene at once, but this was hard upon her, as she was stout, and the heat at the top of the tin-roofed theatre up among the dusty flies was trying. And then, I suggested, there was much competition. The proprietor waved a contemptuous dismissal of the claims of the four little theatres about him. It was not their rivalry that he cared for. It is true the seats were filled, but with whom? Ah, yes, with whom? He placed his finger at the side of his nose, and winked and nodded his head mysteriously. With the friends of the proprietor, of course. Poor non-paying acquaintances to make a show, and attract others less knowing to a very inferior performance. Now here with him everybody paid, and received the worth of his money many times. Perhaps I had not seen the performance; in that case I should surely do so. The clown and the donkey-cart were very amusing, and the dancing skeleton, which came to pieces before the audience and frightened the gendarme, was worthy of my approval. So the two small boys and the nurse and the baby and I dodged under the rope and waited for the performance.
The idle man, who knows that "they also serve who only stand and wait," must find the Champs Élysées the most acceptable of all places for such easy service. There are at one corner the stamp-collectors to entertain him, with their scrap-books and market-baskets full of their precious bits of colored paper, gathered from all over the known world, comparing and examining their treasures, bargaining with easy good-nature and with the zeal of enthusiasts. Three times a week he will find this open market or exchange under the trees, where old men and little boys and pretty young girls meet together and chatter over their common hobby, and swap Columbian stamps for those of some French protectorate, and of many other places of which they know nothing save that it has a post-office of its own. At another corner there are smoothly-shaven men and plump, well-fed-looking women waiting to take service on some gentleman's box-seat or in front of some lady's cooking-stove—an intelligence office where there is no middleman to whom they must pay a fee, and where, while they wait for a possible employer, they hold an impromptu picnic, and pay such gallant compliments that one can see they have lived much in the fashionable world.
Or the idler can drop into a chair in one of the cafés chantants on an off day, when there is no regular performance, but a rehearsal, to which the public is neither invited nor forbidden. It is an entertaining place in which to spend an hour or two, with something to drink in front of you, and a cigar, and the sun shining through the trees upon the mirrors and artificial flowers and the gaudy hangings of the stage. Here you will see Mlle. Nicolle as she is in her moments of leisure. The night before she wore a greasy gingham gown, with her hair plastered over her forehead in oily flat curls, as a laundress or charwoman of Montmartre might wear them. Now she is fashionably dressed in black, with white lace over it, and with a lace parasol, which she swings from her finger in time to the music, while the other artists of the Ambassadeurs' stand farther up the stage waiting their turn, or politely watch her from the front. The girl who chalked her face as Pierrot the evening before follows her in a blue boating-dress and a kick at the end of it, which she means to introduce later in the same day; and the others comment audibly on it from their seats, calling her by her first name, and disagreeing with the leader of the orchestra as to the particular note upon which the kick should come, while he turns in his seat with his violin on his knee and argues it out with them, shrugging his shoulders, and making passes in the air with his lighted cigarette as though it were a baton.
INSIDE COLUMBIN'S