The French imagination, turned loose on dramatic situations, is like a cannibal before a peck of missionaries; only instead of eating ’em alive, the Frenchman makes them live—and diabolically accurate. But not for the doubtful interest of studying French psychology through its horrors, shall we end our day by a visit to the Guignol. Nor yet to the Français or the Odéon, as we are a bit tired to follow Molière or Racine tonight. What do you say to looking in at the cheerful rowdyism of the Moulin Rouge, and then on for a bite at one of the restaurants on “the Hill”? It would never do for you, as a self-respecting American, to leave Paris without properly “doing” Montmartre; and as for me, I want to prove to you my assertion that Montmartre exists for and off visiting strangers like ourselves.
Let us make short work of the Moulin therefore—which is neither more nor less raw than the rest of the variétés prepared for foreign consumption—and go on up to the Place Pigalle; to the racket and ribaldry of the Café Royal. Other night-restaurants make some pretense of silver-gilding their vulgarity; the Abbaye and the Rat Mort have their diamond dust of luxury to throw into one’s eyes. But the Royal is unadulterated Montmartre: the girls, most of them, shabby—their rouge put on without art; the harsh red coats of the tziganes seemingly made of paper, and their songs lacking even the thinnest veneer of French wit.
In the small low room upstairs fresh air is left behind by those who enter. Instead, the heavy-scented powder of the dancing girls, the sweet sickening perfume of great baskets of roses on sale, and the pervading odour of lobster, combine to assail us as we steer through the crowded room to a table. These last are arranged in the familiar hollow square round the wall, leaving a cleared space in the centre for dancers.
We order supper, and then look about us. It is still a different world from the many we have seen today: a world of “wire-pulled automatons,”, who laugh dead laughter, and sing dead tuneless songs, in their clock-work dance of pleasure. There is a sinister host of these puppet-people: girls of seventeen and eighteen, with the hard, settled features of forty; Englishmen, very red and embarrassed, blatantly over for a “larky weed-end”; next them a mere baby of fourteen, with sleek curls to her shoulders, and a slazy blue frock to her knees—chattering shrilly to the Polish Jew with the pasty white face, and the three pasty-white necks rolling over his collar. Yonder, a group of Brazilians, most of them very boys, who have captured the prettiest danseuse and carried her off for champagne; beyond them, torpid-eyed Germans seeking shatzkinder, and American drummers by the dozen—their feet on the bar-rail, their hats on the back of their heads, grinning half sheepishly like nasty little boys on a forbidden holiday.
Well, does it amuse you—this “typical slice of French life,” as the guidebooks label it? And what of the dances—but, rather than look at them, let us talk to this girl who is passing. She seems different from the rest, in her dark “tailor-made” and plain white shirt; among the satin and tinsel of the other women, her costume and her white, almost transparent face cry attention to themselves by very modesty. Perhaps she will talk real talk; occasionally—when she finds she has nothing to gain as marionette—one of them will.
We ask her to have some champagne. Nonchalantly she accepts, and sits down. Is she new at the Royal? is the leading question. Oh no, she has been coming here for nearly a year. But this gentleman is new (quickly)? You reply, with a certain intonation, that you will always be “new,”—that you will not come again. She sends you a searching side-glance—and understands.
The preliminaries clearly disposed of, we get to the meat of things; baldly and with no apology, now that we have thrown down our hand. What is she doing here? Can’t she find a better place? Has she no family to help her?
She smiles, flicks the ash from her cigarette. But yes, she has a family: a blind mother, two little sisters, and a half-witted brother. She is sole bread-winner for the lot. As for this place—a shrug, laconic, unresentful, as she throws a glance round the murky room—it is not chic, true it is second-rate; but the commissions are good, and clothes here do not cost much, and— “the simple fact,” says she, gazing quietly over our shoulder into the glass, is, “that to work any trade successfully, one must have the proper tools. I was young, or I should have thought of that before I began.”
You gasp, under your breath. This French girl, when she draws aside the curtain, draws it to reveal—with terrible sincerity—a thin white face. She tells no tale of an attempt to live “honestly,” of pitiful struggles as dressmaker, shop-girl, and the rest of the sentimental dodges. She bares her tragedy simply as only a French person can; and it is that she has not the proper tools!
You mumble something meant to be consoling, and shamefacedly slip a louis under her plate. She accepts it with no trumped-up emotion, but a frank “merci!” And evidently fearing to bore us, moves away with the nonchalance characteristic of her type.