The famous cafés of the Latin Quarter were all ablaze with electricity and gas and colored incandescent globes. On the terraces hundreds of tables and chairs stood, occupied by students in every imaginable civilian costume, although the straight-brimmed stovepipe and the béret appeared to be the favorite headgear. At least a third of the throng was made up of military students from the Polytechnic, from Fontainebleau, and from Saint-Cyr. Set in the crowded terraces like bunches of blossoms were chattering groups of girls—bright-eyed, vivacious, beribboned and befrilled young persons, sipping the petit-verre or Amer-Picon, gossiping, babbling, laughing like dainty exotic birds. To and fro sped the bald-headed, white-aproned waiters, balancing trays full of glasses brimming with red and blue and amber liquids.
Here was the Café d'Harcourt, all a-glitter, with music playing somewhere inside—the favorite resort of the medical students from the Sorbonne, according to Captain de Barsac. Here was the Café de la Source, with its cascade of falling water and its miniature mill-wheel turning under a crimson glow of light; here was the famous Café Vachette, celebrated as the centre of all Latin Quarter mischief; and, opposite to it, blazed the lights of the "Café des Bleaus," so called because haunted almost exclusively by artillery officers from the great school of Fontainebleau.
Up the boulevard and down the boulevard moved the big double-decked tram-cars, horns sounding incessantly; cabs dashed up to the cafés, deposited their loads of students or pretty women, then darted away toward the river, their lamps shining like stars.
It was truly a fairy scene, with the electric lights playing on the foliage of the trees, turning the warm tender green of the chestnut leaves to a wonderful pale bluish tint, and etching the pavements underfoot with exquisite Chinese shadows.
"It is a shame that this lovely scene should not be entirely respectable," said Alida, resentfully.
"Vice," murmured de Barsac to me, "could not exist unless it were made attractive."
As far as the surface of the life before us was concerned, there was nothing visible to shock anybody; and, under escort, there is no earthly reason why decent women of any age should not enjoy the spectacle of the "Boul' Mich." on a night in springtime.
An innocent woman, married or unmarried, ought not to detect anything unpleasant in the St. Michel district; but, alas! what is known as "Smart Society" is so preternaturally wise in these piping times o' wisdom, that the child is not only truly the father of the man, but also his instructor and interpreter—to that same man's astonishment and horror. It may always have been so—even before the days when our theatres were first licensed to instruct our children in object lessons of the seven deadly sins—but I cannot recollect the time when, as a youngster, I was tolerantly familiar with the scenes now nightly offered to our children through the courtesy of our New York theatre managers.
Slowly we turned to retrace our steps, strolling up the boulevard through the fragrant May evening, until we came to the gilded railing which encircles the Luxembourg Gardens from the School of Mines to the Palais-du-Sénat.