It may be a game that disgusts you, you may find it sordid, even repellent, to watch; but, among people with whom the marriage of convenience is universal (and in most respects turns out excellently well), what can you expect? A lover or a divorce, for both parties; and the French man and woman prefer to maintain the stability of house and name, and to wink at one another’s individual peccadilloes. They are generally very good friends, and devoted to their children; and never, never do they commit that crassness of the Anglo-Saxon, in bringing their amours within the home.
L’HEURE DU RENDEZ-VOUS. RUE DE LA PAIX
So let us watch the departing couples whirl away from the little tea-room, without too great severity; and ourselves wander out into the Place, and up the short, spectacular Rue de la Paix. This above all others is the hour to see it—when fashion throngs the narrow pavements, or bowls slowly past in open motor cars; and when the courts of the great dressmaker’s shops are filled with young blades, waiting for the mannequins to come down. One by one these marvellously slim, marvellously apparelled young persons appear; each choosing the most effective moment she can contrive for her particular entrance into the twilight of the street. A silken hum of skirts precedes her; the swains in the doorway eagerly look up—adjust their scarf-pins, give a jauntier tilt to their top-hats—and the apparition, sweetly smiling and emphatically perfumed, is among them.
There are murmured greetings, a suggestion from two of the bolder of the beaux, a gracious assent from the lady; and the three spin away in a taxi, to Armenonville or Château Madrid, for dinner. They have a very pleasant life, these mannequins; for lending the figure the bon Dieu gave them—or that they painstakingly have acquired—they receive excellent salaries from the great couturiers. In consideration of which they appear at the establishment when they please, or not at all, when they have the caprice to stay away. If the figure is sufficiently remarkable, there is no limit to the whims they can enjoy—and be pardoned, even eagerly implored to return to their deserted posts. And then, as we see, after professional hours—what pleasaunce of opportunity! What boundless possibilities of la vie chic! Really, saith the ex-midinette complacently, it is good to have become a mannequin.
Some there are who at this excellent business-hour of evening, make a preoccupied exit; sweep past the disappointed gentlemen in waiting, and walk swiftly towards the maze and glitter of the Boulevard. The gentlemen shrug, comprehending. A rendez-vous. Out of idle curiosity, one of them may follow. “Mais, ma chère!” he murmurs reproachfully, at sight of the ill-restored antiquity the lady annexes at the corner.
She makes a deprecatory little face, over her shoulder, which says, “You ought to understand, one must be practical. But what about tomorrow night?” And a bit of paste-board flutters from her gold purse and at the feet of the reproachful gentleman; who smiles, picks it up, reads it, shrugs, and strolls back to his doorway, to find other extravagance for this evening.
What a Paris! you exclaim; is there anything in it besides the rendez-vous? Not at this hour. For mechanics and midinettes, bank-clerks and vendeuses, shop-keepers and ever-thrifty daughters of joy, pour into the boulevards in a human flood; and always, following Biblical example, they go two by two. In another hour they will be before their croute-au-pot, in one of these omnipresent cafés; for the present they anxiously wait on corners, or, with a relieved smile, link arms and move off at an absorbed, lingering gait down the boulevard.
Some halt, to sit down at the little tables on the side-walk, and drink an apéritif. Here too, the old dogs of commerce and industry get together over a Pernod or a Dubonnet, and in groups of twos and threes heatedly thrash out the unheard-of fluctuations of the Bourse today. The bon bourgeois meets his wife, and hears of the children’s cleverness, the servant’s perfidy, over a sirop; two anæmic young government clerks gulp Amer Picon, and violently contradict one another about the situation in Morocco; a well-known danseuse sips vermouth with the long-haired youth who directs the orchestra at the Folies Bergères: it is as though, between six and seven, all Paris is strung along outside the cafés that link the boulevard into a chain of chairs and tables. And in the street, down the middle, motor-buses honk their horns, horse-buses crack their whips, cochers and chauffeurs shout anathema to one another and malediction on policemen and the human worm in general; while the traffic thickens and crawls slower with every minute, and a few helpless gendarmes struggle in vain to preserve order.
Let us out of it all, and to dine. We can go to Château Madrid, and eat under the trees, and watch the gorgeous Parisiennes in the gallery as instinctively they group themselves to lend heightened effect to the ensemble; or we can go to Paillard’s and pay ten dollars apiece for the privilege of sitting against the wall and consuming such sauces as never were in Olympus or the earth beneath; or we can dine above the gardens of the Ambassadeurs, in the elegant little balcony that overhangs a miniature stage, and later look on at the revue. Or we can sail up the river in the balmy gloaming, and eat a friture of smelts on the terrasse of the Pêche Miraculeuse—there are a score of places where we can find a delicious meal, and in each observe a different world; running from do to do in the scale of the race.