At Longchamp there are about one hundred and fifty bureaux of the Pari Mutuel, and nearly twice as many on the day of the Grand-Prix. No bet is accepted under five francs, and there are special bureaux for ten, twenty, fifty, and even one hundred, and five hundred francs at the weighing-stand; the bets are of two kinds,—first, for the winning horse, and, second, for the horses "placed" one and two, when there are at least four horses running; one, two, and three, when there are at least eight. When two or more horses belong to the same proprietor and run in the same race, the Pari Mutuel gives the whole stable, that is to say, that if one of the horses of the stable wins the race the bets made upon the other horses of the stable, one or several, are paid as though laid upon the winning animal himself. This rule applies only to bets made upon one winner; for the places, it is not a question of the whole stable, and each horse is paid according to his order in arriving at the winning-post. When all the tickets are collected, the sum total of the bets is ascertained, the seven per cent. tax is deducted, and the sum remaining is divided among the winning tickets. For the placés, there are four operations to be performed after the deduction of the seven per cent.,—first, to subtract from the sum to be divided the sum total of the bets upon the places. This operation has for its object to save the stake of the bettor and to guarantee him against the risks of receiving a sum less than he wagered; second, to divide the new sum thus obtained by two or by three, according as there are two or three placés; third, to divide each half or each third proportionally to the number of bets on each placé; fourth, to add the amount of the bet previously subtracted. All the employés of the Pari Mutuel are strictly forbidden to bet, themselves, under penalty of losing their situations; and the whole is under the control of the Minister of Agriculture and the inspectors of finances.
The establishment of this official regulation was speedily followed by the opening of unauthorized "pool-rooms" all over Paris, in cheap cabarets, tobacco-shops, coiffeurs' salons, anywhere, in which the general public were invited to come in and bet on any horse they chose, without any further concern about attending the races, and with the deduction of the smallest possible commission for the bureau, in some cases fifty or twenty-five centimes. These improvised agencies, in a great majority of cases, hold no communication whatever with the Sociétés, thus depriving them of their commissions, and offer their clients only the slightest guarantees of good faith. This abuse became so flagrant that the law had to be invoked.
The popular cafés, cabarets, buvettes, brasseries, châteaux, moulins, etc., are so numerous as to be entitled to a special chapter. One of the most famous, the Moulin de la Galette, of the Montmartre quarter, is here illustrated, with a touch of the picturesque. It may be reached by the Rue Lepic, more circuitous and possibly more safe than the acrobatic ladders which lead directly to its door. Its usual customers vary from workmen's families through many varieties of painters, strangers, filles, and marlous. Its dances are not of a kind to recommend themselves to the conventional. It is even customary, before each one, for each couple to pay four sous, and it is usually the lady who pays for her cavalier. The beer-shops, or brasseries,—"more properly embrasseries,"—were invented in the Latin Quarter, but have since multiplied more on the lower boulevards. It is asserted that they were better at the beginning; M. Maurice Barres declared at one time: "The brasserie à femmes is quite truly a salon." He appreciated them for the severe discipline maintained in them by the proprietor, or, at least, for the restraint imposed upon the more enterprising clients and servitors by the example of the others. "There was coquetry and flirtage, without much more." He considered this institution necessary; its influence was, in his opinion, beneficent. These superficial endearments, this amiable tone, this care to please which was there displayed, "relaxed the mind and restored the neglected faculties of our sensitiveness." Since then, he has asked himself whether the brasseries have changed or whether he has grown older. Certainly, the qualities which he discovered in them no longer exist. The institution does not seem necessary; the salon is usually a hole; the attendants appear to be the refuse of those places of entertainment the character of which is revealed by the unusual size of the house number over the entrance. Even the Parisian gilding of vice sometimes wears off.
More of these unfortunates, of various shades, may be seen displaying themselves in the open streets, in the public fiacres as in their salons, during the Carnival, and especially on the day of Mardi Gras,—arrayed as Pierrettes, clownesses, rosières [winners of the prize of virtue], and avocats with very open robes, their bared arms and shoulders defying the weather. Their proper establishments are known by a great variety of appellations, the old word bordel being now considered gross. More commonly they are designated discreetly as Tolérances or Gros Numéros; in the popular slang they are claques or boxons. Many of them have special designations, as the celebrated Botte de paille mentioned by Edmond de Goncourt in his Fille Elisa; one of the noisiest was known as the Perroquet gris; and another, from its specialty, Au Télescope. "But at Paris all these maisons chaudes," says an expert in these matters, Rodolphe Darzens, "have a special physiognomy,—they are not, as in the provinces, discreet localities, with an atmosphere of familiar conventionality, in which the father brings his eldest son to pass the evening with the notary of the quarter and the pharmacien of the public square, in an interminable game of billiards or of piquet voleur. Houses very comme il faut, in which no incongruity would be tolerated, from which a Parisian was even chased one day for having pronounced a gross word. Neither do they resemble those vast establishments in the seaports or in the commercial cities, in which the rutting assumes a character of savage eagerness and of primitive fury.
"Excepting in the houses of the exterior quarters of the city which are frequented by soldiers and by coarse peasants, who quickly recover from their first bedazzlement at the fine salons ornamented with mirrors and gilding, illuminated by gas or by electricity, and in which the usual visitors are composed almost exclusively of workmen, which constitutes them rather a species of brasserie, the prostitution in Paris has been refined by luxury. The viveurs enter them, no longer to finish the night in them, but to pass a few minutes, to yawn and to drink champagne in the company of some young women lightly clad, indifferent and passive, pretty sometimes, bestial almost always. You can rarely avoid hearing confidentially from one of them her story, the eternal story of love betrayed. There are sometimes to be found among them some who have received a real education,—these speedily acquire an influence over their comrades, who listen to them, admire them, ask their advice. They are the queens of the household, and Madame treats with them on a footing of equality.
"Frequently an inmate of one of these convents of the Devil will seat herself at the piano, and then some revery of Chopin will rise, melancholy, through the air, while the tears will appear in the eyes of her hearers.
"When, 'finally alone,' to fill up their long leisure of waiting, they play never-ending games of écarté, or, indeed, tell each other's fortunes by the cards, in the hope that the promises they read in them may be speedily realized, promises of a better life, outside of the cursed house, of meeting a monsieur very rich, of country parties, carriages, a little hôtel, who knows? To see, perhaps,—a marriage.