About Paris

by Richard Harding Davis

AT BRUANT'S

Bruant began by singing his own songs in the café chantant in the Champs Élysées, and celebrating in them the life of Montmartre and the Place de la République, and of the Bastille. He has done for the Parisian bully what Albert Chevallier has done for the coster of Whitechapel, and Edward Harrigan for the East Side of New York, but with the important difference that the Frenchman claims to be one of the class of whom he writes, and the audacity with which he robs stray visitors to his café would seem to justify his claims. There is no question as to the strength in his poems, nor that he gives you the spirit of the places which he describes, and that he sees whatever is dramatic and characteristic in them. But the utter heartlessness with which he writes of the wickedness of his friends the souteneurs rings false, and sounds like an affectation. One of the best specimens of his verse is that in which he tells of the Bois de Boulogne at night, when the woods, he says, cloak all manner of evil things, and when, instead of the rustling of the leaves, you hear the groans of the homeless tossing in their sleep under the sky, and calls for help suddenly hushed, and the angry cries of thieves who have fallen out over their spoils and who fight among themselves; or the hurried footsteps of a belated old gentleman hastening home, and followed silently in the shadow of the trees by men who fall upon and rob him after the fashion invented and perfected by le Père François. Others of his poems are like the most realistic paragraphs of L'Assommoir and Nana put into verse.

Bruant himself is a young man, and an extremely handsome one. He wears his yellow hair separated in the middle and combed smoothly back over his ears, and dresses at all times in brown velvet, with trousers tucked in high boots, and a red shirt and broad sombrero. He has had the compliment paid him of the most sincere imitation, for a young man made up to look exactly like him now sings his songs in the cafés, even the characteristically modest one in which Bruant slaps his chest and exclaims at the end of each verse: "And I? I am Bruant." The real Bruant sings every night in his own café, but as his under-study at the Ambassadeurs' is frequently mistaken for him, he may be said to have accomplished the rather difficult task of being in two places at once.

Bruant's café is a little shop barred and black without, and guarded by a commissionnaire dressed to represent a policeman. If you desire to enter, this man raps on the door, and Bruant, when he is quite ready, pushes back a little panel, and scrutinizes the visitor through the grated opening. If he approves of you he unbars the door, with much jangling of chains and rasping of locks, and you enter a tiny shop, filled with three long tables, and hung with all that is absurd and fantastic in decoration, from Chéret's bill-posters to unframed oil-paintings, and from beer-mugs to plaster death-masks. There is a different salutation for every one who enters this café, in which all those already in the place join in chorus. A woman is greeted by a certain burst of melody, and a man by another, and a soldier with easy satire, as representing the government, by an imitation of the fanfare which is blown by the trumpeters whenever the President appears in public. There did not seem to be any greeting which exactly fitted our case, so Bruant waved us to a bench, and explained to his guests, with a shrug: "These are two gentlemen from the boulevards who have come to see the thieves of Montmartre. If they are quiet and well-behaved we will not rob them." After this somewhat discouraging reception we, in our innocence, sat perfectly still, and tried to think we were enjoying ourselves, while we allowed ourselves to be robbed by waiters and venders of songs and books without daring to murmur or protest.

Bruant is assisted in the entertainment of his guests by two or three young men who sing his songs, the others in the room joining with them. Every third number is sung by the great man himself, swaggering up and down the narrow limits of the place, with his hands sunk deep in the pockets of his coat, and his head rolling on his shoulders. At the end of each verse he withdraws his hands, and brushes his hair back over his ears, and shakes it out like a mane. One of his perquisites as host is the privilege of saluting all of the women as they leave, of which privilege he avails himself when they are pretty, or resigns it and bows gravely when they are not. It is amusing to notice how the different women approach the door when it is time to go, and how the escort of each smiles proudly when the young man deigns to bend his head over the lips of the girl and kiss her good-night.

The café of the Black Cat is much finer and much more pretentious than Bruant's shop, and is of wider fame. It is, indeed, of an entirely different class, but it comes in here under the head of the show-places of Paris at night. It was originally a sort of club where journalists and artists and poets met round the tables of a restaurant-keeper who happened to be a patron of art as well, and fitted out his café with the canvases of his customers, and adopted their suggestions in the arrangement of its decoration. The outside world of Paris heard of these gatherings at the Black Cat, as the café and club were called, and of the wit and spirit of its habitués, and sought admittance to its meetings, which was at first granted as a great privilege. But at the present day the café has been turned over into other hands, and is a show-place pure and simple, and a most interesting one. The café proper is fitted throughout with heavy black oak, or something in imitation of it. There are heavy broad tables and high wainscoting and an immense fireplace and massive rafters.