Between two and three o’clock the sexes become adjusted to each other; everybody is eating and talking, drinking and smoking, at the same time. The handsome rooms resound with feasting and merriment. Glasses rattle, forks clatter, tongues wag, songs are sung, toasts given amid the highest glee and enthusiasm.
Standing in a chair, with a beaker of sparkling Clicquot, is the pretty soubrette of the Gymnase, making a mock-heroic speech; and at the end of every sentence she is greeted with the clapping of hands and loud huzzas. Near her the graceful danseuse of the Folies, encircled by the arms of the dramatic critic of the Figaro, is offering a toast in a goblet of Château Margaux, and at the other end of the saloon, two brunette deities are giving a bit of the can-can, in the midst of vociferous cheering.
Stretched on a velvet sofa, her heels elevated above her head, Marie Basquinette, a famous adventuress, who has just come from London, is entertaining her listeners with a droll account of the awkwardnesses and stupidities of the English. (Whenever the French wish to be particularly funny, they always caricature John Bull; and many of them really believe that no Briton can, by any possibility, appear other than uncouth and ridiculous.)
The French prints of well-dressed carousals with which we are so familiar, might be actual photographs of the petits soupers and their surroundings at the Café Helder. As the night wanes apace, and as the east grows gray, the revellers begin to disappear. There is something ghastly in the daylight surprise after a debauch, and the Parisians flee from it as if it brought sermons and endless prayers.
THE DANGEROUS CLASSES OF PARIS.
What we should call the dangerous classes would seem, from the fair outside of Paris, to have no existence there; and yet, as the police well know, many of the most cunning thieves, audacious burglars, and desperate scoundrels are native and to the manner born. They keep out of sight by day, and are rarely seen in the fashionable quarters, unless they have some special mission of villany. These fellows have their organizations and their amusements, and herd together and hold nocturnal revel in out-of-the-way dens, where no one but the gendarme or government spy would think of looking for them.
Having some desire to become acquainted externally with French scoundrels, I mentioned my desire to a private detective, who promised to take me to the district known as the Batignolles, where, he said, many of the choicest miscreants of the city were in the habit of assembling on Sunday nights. He told me that, while there was not likely to be trouble or danger, it would be well to be armed; and so, with two revolvers each, we sprang into a calèche, one stormy Sunday evening, at the Grand Hôtel, and drove to our point of destination.
After nearly an hour’s ride through narrow and dreary streets, over rough pavements, and past malodorous neighborhoods, he stopped before a tall stone building, that looked like a deserted mill.
VISITING A DEN OF THIEVES.