About Paris

by Richard Harding Davis

You have seen people during Horse Show week in New York waiting in the hall at Delmonico's for a table for a half-hour at a time, but on Grand Prix night you will see hundreds of hungry men standing outside of the open-air restaurants in the Champs Élysées, or wandering disconsolately under the trees from the crowded tables of l'Horloge across the Avenue to those of the Ambassadeurs', and from them to the Alcazar d'Été, and so on to Laurent's and the Café d'Orient. Every one apparently is dining out-of-doors on that night, and the white tables, with their little lamps, and with bottles of red wine flickering in their light, stretch under the trees from the Place de la Concorde up to the Avenue Matignon. There are splashing fountains between them and bands of music, and the voices of the singers in the cafés chantants sound shrilly above the chorus of rattling china and of hundreds of people talking and laughing, and the never-ceasing undertone of the cabs rolling by on the great Avenue, with their lamps approaching and disappearing in the night like thousands of giant fire-flies. You are sure to dine well in such surroundings, and especially so after the great race—for the reason that if your friends have won, they command a good dinner to celebrate the fact; or should they have lost, they design a better one in order to help them forget their ill-fortune.

The spirit of adventure and excitement that has been growing and feeding upon itself throughout the day of the Grand Prix reaches its climax after the dinner hour, and finds an outlet among the trees and Chinese lanterns of the Jardin de Paris. There you will see all Paris. It is the crest of the highest wave of pleasure that rears itself and breaks there.

You will see on that night, and only on that night, all of the most celebrated women of Paris racing with linked arms about the asphalt pavement which circles around the band-stand. It is for them their one night of freedom in public, when they are permitted to conduct themselves as do their less prosperous sisters, when, instead of reclining in a victoria in the Bois, with eyes demurely fixed ahead of them, they can throw off restraint and mix with all the men of Paris, and show their diamonds, and romp and dance and chaff and laugh as they did when they were not so famous. The French swells who are their escorts have cut down Chinese lanterns with their sticks, and stuck the candles inside of them on the top of their high hats with the burning tallow, and made living torches of themselves. So on they go, racing by—first a youth in evening dress, dripping with candle-grease, and then a beautiful girl in a dinner gown, with her silk and velvet opera cloak slipping from her shoulders—all singing to the music of the band, sweeping the people before them, or closing in a circle around some stately dignitary, and waltzing furiously past him to prevent his escape. Sometimes one party will storm the band-stand and seize the musicians' instruments, while another invades the stage of the little theatre, or overpowers the women in charge of the shooting-gallery, or institutes a hurdle-race over the iron tables and the wicker chairs.

INTERESTED IN THE WINNER

Or you will see ambassadors and men of title from the Jockey Club jostling cockney bookmakers and English lords to look at a little girl in a linen blouse and a flat straw hat, who is dancing in the same circle of shining shirt-fronts vis-à-vis to the most-talked-of young person in Paris, who wears diamonds in ropes, and who rode herself into notoriety by winning a steeplechase against a field of French officers. The first is a hired dancer, who will kick off some gentleman's hat when she wants it, and pass it round for money, and the other is the companion of princes, and has probably never been permitted to enter the Jardin de Paris before; but they are both of the same class, and when the music stops for a moment they approach each other smiling, each on her guard against possible condescension or familiarity; and the hired dancer, who is as famous in her way as the young girl with the ropes of diamonds is in hers, compliments madame on her dancing, and madame calls the other "mademoiselle," and says, "How very warm it is!" and the circle of men around them, who are leaning on each other's shoulders and standing on benches and tables to look, smile delightedly at the spectacle. They consider it very chic, this combination. It is like a meeting between Madame Bernhardt and Yvette Guilbert.

But the climax of the night was reached last year when the band of a hundred pieces struck buoyantly into that most reckless and impudent of marches and comic songs, "The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo." The cymbals clashed, and the big drums emphasized the high notes, and the brass blared out boastfully with a confidence and swagger that showed how sure the musicians were of pleasing that particular audience with that particular tune. And they were not disappointed. The three thousand men and women hailed the first bars of the song with a yell of recognition, and then dancing and strutting to the rhythm of the tune, and singing and shouting it in French and English, they raised their voices in such a chorus that they could be heard defiantly proclaiming who they were and what they had done as far as the boulevards. And when they reached the high note in the chorus, the musicians, carried away by the fever of the crowd, jumped upon the chairs, and held their instruments as high above their heads as they could without losing control of that note, and every one stood on tiptoe, and many on one foot, all holding on to that highest note as long as their breath lasted. It was a triumphant, reckless yell of defiance and delight; it was the war-cry of that class of Parisians of which one always reads and which one sees so seldom, which comes to the surface only at unusual intervals, and which, when it does appear, lives up to its reputation, and does not disappoint you.