There was no conversation among us when we emerged upon the boulevard, for Mr. Thompkins was in a retrospective frame of mind. Bishop embraced the opportunity to lead us up the Boulevard Clichy to the Place Pigalle. As we neared the Place we saw on the opposite side of the street two flickering iron lanterns that threw a ghastly green light down upon the barred dead-black shutters of the building, and caught the faces of the passers-by with sickly rays that took out all the life and transformed them into the semblance of corpses. Across the top of the closed black entrance were large white letters, reading simply: "Cafe du Néant"
The entrance was heavily draped with black cerements, having white trimmings,—such as hang before the houses of the dead in Paris. Here patrolled a solitary croque-mort, or hired pall-bearer, his black cape drawn closely about him, the green light reflected by his glazed top- hat. A more dismal and forbidding place it would be difficult to imagine. Mr. Thompkins paled a little when he discovered that this was our destination,—this grisly caricature of eternal nothingness,—and hesitated at the threshold. Without a word Bishop firmly took his arm and entered. The lonely croque-mort drew apart the heavy curtain and admitted us into a black hole that proved later to be a room. The chamber was dimly lighted with wax tapers, and a large chandelier intricately devised of human skulls and arms, with funeral candles held in their fleshless fingers, gave its small quota of light.
Large, heavy, wooden coffins, resting on biers, were ranged about the room in an order suggesting the recent happening of a frightful catastrophe. The walls were decorated with skulls and bones, skeletons in grotesque attitudes, battle-pictures, and guillotines in action. Death, carnage, assassination were the dominant note, set in black hangings and illuminated with mottoes on death. A half-dozen voices droned this in a low monotone:
"Enter, mortals of this sinful world, enter into the mists and shadows of eternity. Select your biers, to the right, to the left; fit yourselves comfortably to them, and repose in the solemnity and tranquillity of death; and may God have mercy on your souls!"
A number of persons who had preceded us had already pre-empted their coffins, and were sitting beside them awaiting developments and enjoying their consommations, using the coffins for their real purpose,—tables for holding drinking-glasses. Alongside the glasses were slender tapers by which the visitors might see one another.
There seemed to be no mechanical imperfection in the illusion of a charnel-house; we imagined that even chemistry had contributed its resources, for there seemed distinctly to be the odor appropriate to such a place.
We found a vacant coffin in the vault, seated ourselves at it on rush- bottomed stools, and awaited further developments.