The gardens of Paris, like the Mabille, the Closerie de Lilas, the Château Rouge, and many others reveal another feature of the under-world. The Mabille, to which strangers generally go, is the least indecorous, and, I may add, the dullest. There half a dozen couples, the women being generally of the lowest demi-monde class, are paid so much per night for dancing of the most extraordinary sort. What it lacks in delicacy is made up in energy. The greatest ambition of the cocottes is to kick the hats from the heads of their partners, and to throw their drapery into the wildest confusion. Their movements belong rather to gymnastics than the quadrille, which they pretend to execute, and when their leaping and plunging begin to pall upon the spectators, they have recourse to the shamefully indecent can-can.
MABILLE, CHÂTEAU ROUGE, AND PRADO.
The Mabille draws strangers, as honey draws flies. Eminently respectable and altogether staid persons go there, and closely observe the dancers, without any apparent disapproval too, when they would be supremely shocked at home at the slightest intimation of such licentious conduct. I have observed pious matrons from New England watching the saltatorial goddesses through their spectacles, as they might watch the gambols of unknown animals. The Mabille soon grows wearisome, and few persons frequent it on their second visit to Paris.
The Château Rouge is a more extended, demonstrative, and free-and-easy place of resort than the Mabille. It is much more democratic also; the prices of admission for men (women are admitted without charge) being one franc, instead of three. To encourage attendance, prizes are offered to those who shall be present the greatest number of nights during the season, and the announcement of the prizes is placarded upon the wall, so that every one may see them. Silk gowns are the temptations for the gentler, and watches for the sterner sex. I should imagine that some of the girls expected a reward for lifting their gaiters in a direct line above their heads, so often do they attempt it, and so generally do they succeed.
The Closerie de Lilas, called the Prado in winter, is the place where the students and the grisettes go in crowds, and where they whirl and make merry for the pure love of the thing. The attendance is very large on Thursday and Sunday nights, when I have seen five or six hundred persons of both sexes, flushed with wine, and dancing like mad dervishes. The revels there are fast and furious enough. License reigns supreme, and Bacchus and Venus seem to inspire the orgies. Paris always limits its public exhibitions, and minions of the law are ever present to keep licentiousness within bounds. Without stimulants the grisettes and cocottes become wild with excitement as the music of Offenbach pours out under the sky to infect them with its sensuous frenzy. Doubtless the students and their lemans enjoy themselves to the utmost; for they could not counterfeit enjoyment so excellently. They smoke, and drink, and laugh, and talk, and chat, and caper together without the smallest reserve or restraint, as if they had not, and never would have, any other thought than of the present moment and its absorbing pleasure.
A DELIRIUM OF DANCING.
When the weather is unfavorable, they have their balls in a large, covered space; and to see and hear them leaping, tumbling, screaming, and roaring in one confused and palpitating mass, impresses the self-contained and impassive Anglo-Saxon very strangely. Those French revellers have few concealments. They do their wooing in the presence of hundreds; they have their little quarrels in the midst of their carnival of glee. Elise appeals to Jacques with shrugs and starts, and streaming eyes; and Victoire complains of neglect, and emphasizes his jealousy to Marguerite before the giddy throng, as if they were in the privacy of their own apartments. They make up their differences with petting words and copious caresses, and enact their melodramas regardless of curious eyes and smiling lookers-on.
There are resorts, and not a few, in Paris, of a more private character, where decorum is not observed, and where restraint is not practised. All evil passions are there let loose, and vices revealed that would be repulsive to any but morbid minds. Such shameful entertainments are declared to be in imitation of ancient Grecian revels and Roman rites. The claim is noteworthy, for Paris, in its most revolting and secret sins, never forgets to assure itself and the external world that such entertainments are sanctioned by classicism. These may be imagined: they certainly cannot be described.
FAST SUPPERS.
The petits soupers of the under-world are reckoned by many among the attractions of the French capital. They occur at many of the restaurants, though at Peter’s and the Café Helder they are given with the most flavor. These little suppers begin after midnight, and continue until dawn, and though the best of them are private, the public ones, or rather those in public places, have enticements for the masculine mind, on account of the eccentric women to be found at them. At Peter’s and the Café Helder are spacious saloons, provided with small tables; and about one o’clock in the morning, parties of gayly-dressed ladies, with their gallants, and often without gallants, begin to arrive. Many come in carriages, but some on foot, albeit the pedestrians are attired like stage queens. The majority of the women are lorettes, of different grades, but not a few of them are the inferior actresses of the Gaîté, Variétés, and Gymnase, and the ballet girls of the Vaudeville, Ambigu, and Folies Dramatiques. There they completely unbend, cast reserve to the breezes, take easy positions, chatter like magpies, blow small clouds of smoke at the frescoed ceiling, or keep time to the clinking of champagne glasses with their symmetrical feet. Those unescorted are entirely willing to be invited to partake of salads, ices, or wines by the gentlemen who drop in from mere curiosity, or from a desire to make feminine acquaintances.