Читать книгу How Paris Amuses Itself - F. Berkeley Smith - Страница 5

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The famous chef, Vatel, before a dinner given to Louis XIV., killed himself because the fish was late.

Nowadays he might simply have shrugged his shoulders in apology, a mode of reply most popular in France, and against which all argument is as useless as so much steam in the air.

Boil with rage if you will; plead with the ingenuity of a defending lawyer, or berate him in language which would inspire renewed effort in a government mule, the Frenchman’s shrug will disarm you as neatly as an expert duelist sends your foil spinning out of your grip, and you will be conscious of how useless your tirade has been only when you perceive the delinquent monsieur with the elevated shoulders bowing himself politely out through the door.

A year ago the veteran chef of a celebrated Parisian restaurant resigned his position. Prices had been affixed to the menu. With this deplorable change the famous maison had sunk below the dignity of this august personage. To attach to so noble a creation as a “filet d’ours à la François-Joseph” a fixed price as one would to a pound of butter, made his further connection with the house an impossibility. “Parbleu!” he cried, “Had Paris become a gargotte for the grand monde that he should have lived to see this?”

There still remain a few smart restaurants where there are no prices on the menu, but even in these there is a second edition of the bill of fare with the prices thereon which the maître d’hôtel will apologetically hand you when he discovers you are neither a millionaire nor a fool, even tho your French may be not so good as his own. If you have the leisure, the best plan is to order your dinner for a partie carrée in advance and for a certain fixed sum, as most Parisians do.

AROUND THE HALLES

In no city in the world are there so many and so varied places to dine as in Paris. One can hardly look right or left from any corner of any street and not find restaurants, from little boîtes, where a plat du jour and a bottle of wine are to be had for a few sous, to those whose cuisine and rare vintages are adapted only to the well-filled purse of an epicure. There are numberless resorts frequented by the vast army of bohemians, some the rendezvous for students and grisettes, others for the poets, the pensive, long-haired devotees of the symbolistic school, and kindred souls in the realm of art. There are those patronized by jolly, devil-may-care young doctors, sleepless night-owls, who discuss till graying dawn their latest operations with a complacent sense of superiority over the other half of the human world, who, they are convinced, without their medical aid would be left as helpless as a mass of struggling white bait in a net. And there, too, buried away in the dingy alley of Montmartre and fringing the ill-reputed neighborhoods of La Butte and the great Halles, are the feeding places of thieves, reeking from the odor of decaying vegetables and bad cheeses, yet, they say, supplied with some of the rarest wines.

A BUSY MORNING

It was a famous French sociologist who declared, from extended personal investigations of the private life of the Parisian mendicants, that the best champagne brut he had yet encountered he had found on the dinner tables of professional beggars.

Along the lighted streets and boulevards are the great brasseries for Munich beer and German dishes, and the richly decorated taverns, some of them in black oak shining in pewter and ornate with medieval decoration and stained glass. These are swarming with eddies from the passing world until long after midnight. Many of these are the habitual rendezvous of journalists, like the Café Navarin. Others, like the Café des Variétés and the Taverne de la Capitale, are the favorite places for actors, and still others for painters and musicians. There is hardly a resort in Paris which has not its distinct clientèle, from the buvettes of the cochers to Maxime’s.

And of soberer kind are the innumerable, perfectly kept establishments created by Duval and imitated by Boulant. They are big places for small purses; everything is of excellent quality, well cooked, and served by respectable women in spotless white caps and aprons.

There are hundreds of other restaurants besides, with dîners and déjeuners at a prix fixe, in which a secondary quality of food is turned into a clever imitation of the best, and where the wine is plain and harmless and included with a course dinner au choix for two francs fifty and less. On fête days and Sundays these well patronized petits dîners de Paris are crowded with bourgeois folk: clerks with their sweethearts, commerçants and their families, economical bachelors, and others, frugal-minded, from out of Paris who have come into the metropolis to spend a long-anticipated holiday.

And in contrast to all these dining places are the smart restaurants, filled with the correct grand monde and the chic demi-monde—the Café de Madrid, the Maison Anglaise, Paillard, Arménonville, La Rue, Joseph, Ledoyen, Voisin and the Café de Paris. There are serious old places, such as the Tour d’Argent, plain and unadorned, where all the wealth is in the casserolles and the cobwebbed bottles. Then, too, there is the ancient Restaurant Foyot, with its clientèle of senators, academicians and military officers, and the Restaurant La Pérouse on the quay of the Seine, where resort savants and magistrates and others less grave—an old-fashioned place with a narrow stairway leading to quaint, low-ceiled cabinets particuliers and excellent things simmering over the kitchen fires below stairs and certain rare old Burgundy lining the walls of the cellar.

Just such a place of seclusion and good cooking is the “Père La Thuille” in Montmartre. It is often a pleasure to dine in a room devoid of gilt and tinsel. The Père La Thuille is restful in this respect. The cuisine is perfect and the wine very old.

THE KITCHEN OF A CHEAP TABLE D’HÔTE

At one of the tables in the rectangular dining-room a celebrated diva whose bodice glitters in gems is dining with monsieur, the aged director of a gas company. Several empty tables away another elderly gentleman is filling Mademoiselle Fifi’s glass of champagne. Half hidden in another corner of the long leather settee a lady with delicate features and frank, intelligent eyes pours forth her soul and the remainder of a bottle to a well-groomed man at her side. The light from the shaded candles shows more clearly his strong fine hands. Now the little finger of his companion touches his seal ring quite unconsciously, as one would give an accent by a gesture to a confession. For a moment he covers her tiny hand with his own. Poor devil! he must return to his regiment to-morrow and, what is still sadder, the lady is married.

The New York Dairy Lunch, with its mirrored and marbled bathroom decoration, its elevating Bible texts, and depressing “sinkers,” and its dyspeptic griddle-cakes cooked in the window, would never make a success with Parisians. One of the most doleful sights I have seen in Paris was a sad-looking gentleman in black sitting at a cold marble-topped table of an expensive patisserie lunching on a weak cup of tea and a plate of cream-puffs—Chacun son goût!

There exist here, however, “Express Bars” along the boulevards, where by dropping two sous in a slot you are permitted to rob the nickel-plated chicken house installed beneath of any of a dozen different articles, from a baba au rhum to a glass of beer. But Parisians stop at these places very much as they would to hear a phonograph, or as French children stop for their goûter at four o’clock in the cake shops, or as men and women of all classes drop in for the celebrated fruits in spirits dispensed at the famous solid silver bar of La Mère Moreau.

The French never hurry over dinner. The pleasure of dining must not be spoiled by haste. It is an hour which nothing postpones. If anything serious is to be decided upon, Parisians dine first and then think the matter over. Perhaps after all they are right, for are we not at our best in heart and spirit when we have dined wisely? Anger, hatred, even the green monster jealousy, fade away with the progress of a good dinner.

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LE PLONGEUR

Into the Restaurant Weber comes an old bon-vivant growling. He stands for a brief moment surveying the tables, chooses one of the few unoccupied ones and plants himself savagely in front of the snow-white cloth. “The devil!” he mutters to himself. “She’ll get my letter to-morrow. Bon Dieu! to think I have been imbecile enough to trust her!”

“Has monsieur le comte ordered?” interrupted quietly the maître d’hôtel Léon.

The count glowers over the menu.

“Some filets de hareng saurs.”

“Parfaitement, monsieur,” replies Léon, and he repeats the order to a waiter.

There follows a pause, during which the count’s irate eye (the one not occupied with his monocle) wanders absently over the list.

“Perhaps monsieur would like an excellent purée of peas to follow?” Léon naïvely suggests.

“Bon!” gruffly accepts the comte. “And a homard, and a roast partridge with a good salad, and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, ’93,” adds the count.

“Bien, monsieur, I will season the salad myself.” And Léon, with an authoritative gesture, claps his hands twice, stirring into increased activity the already alert waiters, gives a final touch to the appointments of the count’s table, and hurries off to attend to another dinner, a jolly party of four who need no further cheering up.

Drawing by Sancha

LE MAÎTRE D’HÔTEL

“She has the innocent eyes of a child when she lies!” mutters the count, returning to his thoughts.

But the tiny filets de hareng, with their tang of the sea, sharpen his appetite, and the wine quiets his nerves and refreshes his brain, and the purée warms him and the lobster steaming in its thick, spicy sauce cheers him. The hatred within him is growing less. That lump of jealousy buried so deep half an hour ago has so diminished that, when the fat little partridge arrives, garnished and sunk in its nest of fresh watercress, this gives the fatal coup to ill humor. Again the champagne is rattled out of its cooler. Léon, whose watchful eye is everywhere and whose intuition tells him when a patron wishes to talk, now comes to the count’s table.

The count has by this time become the soul of good humor. He compliments Léon on the dinner and Léon compliments him on his taste in selection of viands, and so they talk on until Léon goes himself for a special liqueur.

The count gazes peacefully on those about him and admires, with the critical eye of a connoisseur of beauty, the pretty woman at the corner table. Silent waiters lay the fresh cloth and bring him an extensive choice of Havanas. All these final accessories have little by little taken away the remnants of his ill feeling. He puffs reminiscently at his cigar. His very spirit of revenge seems to have been steamed, sautéed and grilled out of him. Now he takes from his waistcoat pocket a thin gold watch—the one he bought at a round sum in Geneva years ago and which has been faithfully ticking away the seconds of his turbulent life so long that he has come to regard it somewhat with awe, as one would the change from his last dollar.

The delicate hands have crept to nine o’clock and two tiny bells within strike the hour. The count writes upon his visiting card a short line, seals it in its envelope, calls the chasseur and, giving him the note, directs: “Stop on your way at Véton’s for the red roses.”

LE CHASSEUR

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Ah, mesdames et messieurs, how many of your little troubles have been settled by the doctor with the cordon bleu and the shining saucepans!

The Taverne Pousset is famous for its beer, its écrevisses (crawfish boiled scarlet and served steaming), and its soupe à l’ognon, a bouillon redolent with onions and smothered beneath a coverlet of brown cheese.

Parisians flock to Pousset after the theater. At night its richly decorated interior is ablaze with light and crowded with those who have stopped for supper after the play.

There are dozens of just such tavernes and brasseries. These German institutions have oddly enough become most popular with the French, who have grown in recent years critically fond of good beer. I might add, however, that it is the only thing German that has become popular. That little affair of Sedan is still in the gorge.

The Coq d’Or, on the rue Montmartre, is one of the oldest taverns in Paris. Its clientèle during dinner is composed of commerçants and a mixture of bourgeoisie and Bohemia, but after midnight, as happens in scores of other such places, the Coq d’Or is filled by a veritable avalanche of demi-mondaines of the surrounding quarter.

If you dine at Marguery’s, order a sole au vin blanc and let Étienne bring it to you.

If it is summer you will find a table in the covered portico brilliant with hanging flowers, or you may choose a snug corner behind the cool green hedge that skirts the entrance of this famous rendezvous of rich bourgeois and commerçants.

The restaurant Marguery is unique. It is a magnificent establishment, perfect in its cooking, its wines, and its service. I know of no restaurant where for this perfect ensemble one pays so moderate and just a price; the proof of this is that here you will see the true Parisian; neither is there any supplementary charge for any of the cabinets particuliers or the private dining-rooms. It is the only maison de premier ordre I know of which does not tax one more or less heavily for the right of seclusion.

You will have hardly finished your sole before a distinguished old gentleman with a decoration in his lapel and a crumpled napkin in one hand, will pass your table, bowing graciously to you if you are a stranger and stopping to say a few pleasant words if you are a friend. He is slightly bent with age, massive of frame, with silvery locks combed back from a broad forehead, and his face is illumined with kindliness and intelligence.

“VOILÀ, MONSIEUR!”

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Such a personage is Monsieur Marguery, whom the French government has decorated in recognition of his skill as a restaurateur, a man who still directs personally every detail of this superb establishment where one can dine for a few francs with an excellent bottle of wine, or give a dinner fit for an emperor, including, I have not the slightest doubt, the famous peacock tongues should you wish them, and with a choice of wines from a cellar whose contents are valued at three millions of francs.

In a corner a fat merchant, flushed with a heavy dinner, is ready for his chat with the sommelier. He tells him with some fervor that he is proud to say that when he was eighteen he dined on a sou’s worth of bread on the stones of the Place de la Bastille. “Men of that time were ready to begin at the foot of the ladder,” he continues, puffing at his cigar, “but nowadays our sons, who see us in comfort, want to obtain money and luxuries without going through the mill.”

“Par ici! monsieur,” says Étienne, and he leads the way up a carved stairway to the floor above, past little cabinets particuliers whose cozy interiors are marvels of good taste. Here is one with walls of rich brocade of the time of Louis XVI. Another is in early French, with its adaptation of Chinese ornaments. Another is paneled in ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl; still another in pale lilac brocade and teakwood. Each of these private rooms has its serving pantry across a narrow hallway where the linen and glass and silver are kept spotless, in readiness at a moment’s notice. A superb private stairway in white marble and stained glass connects this portion of the restaurant with a dignified courtyard leading out to a gray little side street. But these are the little rooms.

There is, besides, a great banquet hall in medieval Gothic that might have been carried bodily out of some feudal castle in Touraine with a carved minstrel gallery, a superb ceiling and rare stained glass. Here wedding breakfasts and dinners are given with cotillions to follow. And there are two other salons paneled in rare carving and inlaid woods. At the bottom of another stairway Étienne directs me across the mosaic floor of a spacious hall and into a grotto-like cave. Here is another dining-room. It is resplendent in stalactites with green ferns growing from walls of moss-grown rocks and a cascade talking to itself and purling into a green pool.

Music? no, indeed. People who come here have too good a time to need to be waltzed through the soup or polkaed through the entrée.

It is four o’clock and they are laying the round table in the center of the grotto with twenty covers. It might be for a state dinner in the presence of a king, so perfectly is the table appointed and in such rare taste. A bed of violet orchids forms the center of the table.

I look up and catch sight of the venerable Monsieur Marguery on the stairway, peering interestedly into the room to watch the laying of the service. He has suddenly entered through some hidden door—a panel in the wall which Étienne afterwards shows me. “He is everywhere, as you see,” said Étienne, quietly.

LE GÉRANT

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“Ah! it is you, monsieur,” says Monsieur Marguery, cheeringly, as he approaches. “And have you found this grotto room charming with the pale orchids and the cool water? You know in summer,” he continues, “it is quite as cool here as in the Bois”—and he might have added, quite as beautiful, for this fairy corner needed only the setting of wit and beauty to make it a paradise.

“And you see, my friend,” he continues, “you have seen only the upstairs of my restaurant. Come between seven and eight some evening and I will put you in a corner of my kitchen when it is busiest,” and he adds, with smiling good humor, “I won’t warn them you are coming.”

I was the guest of the chef in the Marguery kitchen at eight o’clock one Saturday evening. There were a dozen wedding banquets going on upstairs, and scores of hidden dîners particuliers, while the restaurant, screened from the kitchen by a swinging door, was filled to overflowing.

I passed through this door and met my host with the cordon bleu, who looked more like the director of a railroad than a cook. He placed me in a safe corner connecting the meat room and the kitchen, from which I could observe and still be out of the way of the rush, for the famous cuisine was as busy as a stage during a spectacle.

A long counter ran the length of the room, serving as a barrier against hurrying waiters. Back of this counter lay the culinary plant. Five great ranges were in full blast.

At one a cloud of steam rose from some entrée, on the second range a great copper saucepan was suddenly lifted and the fire beneath it sent up a lurid flare which went slipping up the hooded chimney.

The room was in a state of bedlam with the cries of meat cooks, vegetable cooks, soup cooks and waiters hurrying for their orders. The system beneath all this was perfect.

THE VEGETABLE COOK

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A waiter sprang through the swinging door shouting his order. He never was forced to repeat it, so alert were the staff of cooks that they seemed to have been awaiting him.

“Un Chateaubriand aux pommes!” cries a garçon.

“Un Chateaubriand aux pommes!” corroborates a chief cook.

Instantly a man dodges out of the meat room, a second later the steak is sizzling over the fire, the vegetable cook stands ready with his potatoes, a fourth prepares the sauce, a fifth attends to the plates, and the sixth looks after the garnishing of the dish.

“I am glad you find it interesting,” said my host the chef, as he joined me for a moment’s rest.

I bowed my compliments.

“And is this the only kitchen for so large an establishment?” I ventured, in surprise.

“Yes, the only one; we do it all here. It is the organization which counts, not the space. With these five ranges and this force of men we are competent to handle as many dinners as come under the roof.”

The chef’s eye seemed everywhere. When the rush was over, his private coupé would call for him, but at present he was on guard.

I marveled at this man’s memory. What a catalog of sauces, each one containing scores of ingredients, he must carry in his head! What a list of dishes, each one prepared in a dozen different ways! I imparted to him the fact that my culinary skill was limited to boiling an egg, and he laughed good-humoredly, his intelligent face, with its white mustache, glowing under his white cap in the glare of a nearby fire.

“Precisely, monsieur, but you see it is the same in every profession; one must learn the minute parts which tend to make something which in itself pleases, whether it be through the mind, the pocket, or the stomach,” and, asking me to excuse him for a moment, he disappeared in the direction of a cloud of mushroom steam to overlook an entrée.

A cook near me was busy with the final sizzle of a duck en casserole.

The man was an artist in the way he stirred his sauce. Even in the very handling of the burnished copper batterie of saucepans about him.

I fully expected this culinary prestidigitator would produce the lady’s ring from the duck he had just finished cooking and discover the rabbit in my overcoat pocket, but the duck was smothered so quickly in a rich brown sauce, with a dash of this and a pinch of that from the magician, and finally thrust for a final magic touch over the crackling blaze, that, before I could guess what might happen next, it was on its way to some cabinet particulier, where a quiet little man with gray hair was waiting to carve it.

It was he who won the grand prize for his skill in getting sixty slices from a single duck. He has quite the air of a dignified surgeon who has been called in consultation.

He carves with a plain knife sharpened upon the back of a plate. The duck seems to fall apart under his expert touch. He mashes into a paste the liver and heart, pouring over the whole the red blood gravy. Voilà! It is done; and, passing the first dish to one of the group of garçons at his elbow who have been watching him, he bows and leaves the room. The group of waiters about him are deeply interested in this object lesson, and it is this willingness to learn which makes in Paris so many good garçons de café.

The famous old Maison Dorée has closed its doors. The business of this celebrated restaurant had fallen off so seriously that its death was but a question of days. Paris had deserted it in its old age and dined elsewhere.

Many of the waiters, who had spent their lifetime beneath its roof, hoped against hope, and continued to serve the few habitués who remained faithful to the end.

Occasionally a party of strangers would open the door, and, finding the restaurant deserted, close it apologetically and go on their way to a gayer place.

THE MAGICIAN

In encouraging moments like these the veteran waiters ceremoniously took their places and the dignified maître d’hôtel advanced to greet the newcomers bravely, as if the ruin of the old house were not an open secret. There is something pathetic about the death of an establishment like the Maison Dorée.

How much gaiety it has seen in its lifetime!

How faithfully it has cheered those who entered its doors!

Here the vie Parisienne that Grévin and Cham drew so inimitably, came to dine in the old days; the courtezans of Balzac; the belles and beaux of the Empire.

Just as the Maison Dorée lived in thoroughbred dignity so did it die. Yesterday morning the shades of the windows were drawn down. The end had come. A simple card on the door bore the words:

“LE RESTAURANT

EST FERMÉ.”

And one felt like laying a wreath on its threshold.

THE VERSEUR

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On Saturdays the Café de la Cascade, in the Bois, is taken possession of by bourgeois wedding parties, with brides in white satin gowns and grooms and their friends in dress-suits, which they had donned early in the morning and in which they have sung and cheered, and drunk the bride’s health and the groom’s health, and that of les belles soeurs and les petits nephews and all the innumerable enfants, cousins and cousines, comrades and amis connected by blood, marriage or friendship with the happy pair.

No wonder that by midnight, after such a day of continuous festivity, the poor bride is wild-eyed, flushed, exhausted and demoralized! For this bourgeois wedding had started at ten A. M. with the civil ceremony at the City Hall, the civil wedding being the only one legally recognized in France. From the hall the party proceeded to the church, where most brides insist on going after the civil ceremony. Here occurs another long function, including an address by the priest or minister. Then the bridesmaids, accompanied by the men of honor, garçons d’honneur, of which there are three classes, make two collections among the assemblage: one for the poor and the other for the church. This procession is headed by a gorgeously dressed major-domo, “Le Suisse,” who pounds the floor with his heavy baton as he strides solemnly through the aisles warning everyone to get their donations ready. The collections referred to are made either in a butterfly net, which discreetly hides the sous from view, or in purses made to match the gowns of the bridesmaids and carried ostensibly open for the expected louis.

There are several classes of weddings, just as there are several classes of funerals, their magnificence progressing in proportion to the money paid. You can be married at the little altar or the big one, enter under a spangled canopy at the front door or by an unadorned modest side one.

Now comes another ordeal for the bride; having gone to the sacristy after the ceremony, she is obliged to shake hands with everyone present and be kissed on both cheeks by cousins, friends or even acquaintances. Then the procession of carriages drives up, each being given its precedence in line. They are filled and start off for the wedding breakfast at the restaurant. This means a well-to-do wedding; many couples can afford only one huge stage which alternately serves in going to and from the races, while others go on foot, often six or seven arm-in-arm romping through the streets, singing or stopping at some little buvette for a glass of wine. The poor bride walks on and on, holding her satin train. She is half exhausted, but is expected to be bright and gay. Poor victim, the day has only begun for her!

After the wedding breakfast at the restaurant, trains are taken to some nearby country place like St. Cloud, or carriages to the Café de la Cascade. Here occurs the indispensable dinner, a feast of uproarious camaraderie, where dishes succeed dishes, and where each one is expected to be rollicking and witty and sing his song. In accordance with an old custom, to the first man of honor is allotted the privilege of trying to steal the garter of the bride.

The dance which follows this dinner lasts until morning, and lucky are the bride and groom if they can escape by midnight.

But mild indeed are these bourgeois weddings of the city compared with those of the well-to-do peasants! These include festivities which last three days, most of which time is spent at table, where beef is followed by veal, veal by mutton, mutton by rabbit, rabbit by chicken, and chicken by pork, and so on through the list of viands. This continuous feast is only made possible by consuming from time to time a stiff glass of applejack.

“Vive la mariée!” cry a dozen overjoyous ones in front of a café at St. Cloud as my voiture tries to pass. My cocher grins and cracks his whip. The best man, a soldier, the groom and a dozen others, noisy with the sound wine of Touraine, link arms in front of my rawboned steed, yelling:

“You cannot pass, monsieur, unless you cry Vive la mariée!”

“Vive la mariée!” I cry, loudly as I can, in my ineradicable accent.

There is a welcoming shout from the wedding party. The bride throws me a kiss. The little cousins and cousines and the beau-frère and belle-mère wave their handkerchiefs in acknowledgment, a dozen tumblers of red wine are offered to me, and as many are thrust at the fat cocher who is now waving his glazed hat in the air with enthusiasm.

“Vive la République! Vive la mariée! Vive la France!” come from a score of throats as I am allowed to proceed. As we rattle up a crooked street, the din of the festivity grows fainter and fainter in the distance, now I hear faintly the indistinct blare of the band playing below for the dance, and now and then a cheer, stronger than the others, floats up from the far-away café: “Vive la mariée!”

Dining in the open air is brought to its perfection in the Bois de Boulogne.

The Chalet du Touring Club, at the entrance of the Bois, is a popular rendezvous for the bicycling Mimis and the Faustines, and their admirers. At the apéritif hour in the afternoon, this cosmopolitan café under the trees is crowded with a mixed assemblage. It is an excellent place in which to breakfast well and at a moderate price.

The Pavillon Chinois, with its picturesque pagoda-like roof, is frequented by a richer class.

During the season, between five and seven, all of smart Paris may be seen at the Pavillon d’Armenonville. At this hour the tables in the garden are filled with pretty women in chic toilettes, accompanied by faultlessly dressed gentlemen whose bank accounts have managed thus far to survive.

By six, the scene resembles a garden party. There is a mixture of nature and artifice, of exquisite toilettes, of gay flowers blooming in beds under the shadows of sturdy trees up in whose branches the birds flutter and sing. One’s ears are filled with babble of voices and the soft laughter of those whose life for the moment is happy. The sun has sunk in an opalescent haze, its rays reflect upon the glass of the pavilion and the edge of the tiny kiosks whence come the chatter and laughter of some jolly partie carrée still at table over a late déjeuner. Above the hum drones the rhythm of the Tziganes; their violins cry in some plaintive gipsy song. Now the strings rush into the most seductive of Viennese waltzes, melting away, to begin afresh in some mad Hungarian czardas.

Smart turnouts and little private victorias with tinkling bells are constantly arriving and departing. Now there is a sound of prancing hoofs and the clink of harness at the entrance of the garden, and in rumbles a break perfectly driven by a well-groomed gentleman posed in faultless style on the box seat. By his side sits a Parisienne of Parisiennes—from the glossy undulations of her black hair to the tips of her tiny patent leather boots, both of which are now occupied in daintily descending the steps of the break. She is a famous beauty who sings at one of the cafés concerts, quite young, with pretty white teeth and an olive skin.

ENTRANCE OF THE CAFÉ DE MADRID

THE GARDEN OF THE CAFÉ DE MADRID

Her companion leaves his turnout to the care of his grooms, and the break with its shining red wheels rumbles away in the direction of the carriage shed. The charming brunette is radiant from the drive; they have been nearly to Poissy and back. She will now have a gaufrette and a coupe de fruits au champagne, and the gentleman who drove so cleverly a cigarette and a long brandy and soda. This dainty Parisienne insists on preparing this “drôle de boisson anglaise” herself, and, with a rippling laugh, puts in the ice and the brandy and then the soda, and, as a final touch, in a spirit of deviltry, adds a cherry from her own coupe, for which archness she is scolded by her companion, to whom she blows a kiss in return.

A RESTAURANT ON THE CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES

At eight, the Pavillon d’Armenonville will be brilliant with a throng of diners—men in spotless shirt-fronts and women in toilets of lace and jewels—and crisp notes of the Bank of France will change hands for rich food and sparkling wine. The season for these delightful retreats of the Bois being short, the rents for them are exorbitant, and so the monde must pay the fiddler accordingly.

At the end of the Bois is the Chalet du Cycle, another restaurant with a superb garden flaming in flowers, and dotted with cozy thatched kiosks like the huts of some jungle village and dotted with tables shaded by huge red umbrellas. Here at the apéritif hour the crowd comes en bicyclette and automobile, and at night the hurrying waiters serve parties dining cozily in the glow of shaded candles. The Chalet du Cycle is a charming place in which to breakfast some sunny morning with the Seine gliding close by under the trees.

Another segment of fairy-land, even more exquisite in its mise en scène, is the Café de Madrid. Here a low, rambling, half-timbered house forms a courtyard which is as brilliant at night with the haut monde at dinner. Here, too, as at Armenonville, the carriages, entering under a gateway smothered in trailing vines, drive in past the tables. Everywhere about you there are flowers—banks of geraniums and fragrant roses. When you have dined, you can turn your armchair and watch the beauty about you and the victorias coming and going.

It is characteristic for Parisians to sit for hours over dinner. The Café de Madrid at night resembles closely a garden party given at the château of some private estate. It is the absence of the feeling of publicity that makes it so charming.

And after all this restful luxury there is the cool Bois to drive in, through forest alleys with the smell of the fresh woods all about and the sparkle of stars overhead.

Who will ever tell the history of this famous playground of rich and poor? How many of its silent trees have sheltered and kept secret the romances of the world! How much honor has been risked for the sake of cruel, triumphant women whose hearts were tender in proportion to their needs! And how many real loves have sought it as a refuge!

If all this is sad, turn back in your drive towards the sparkling lights of the city, to Paris who is now wearing all her jewels. Some of her strings of diamonds are glittering through the vista of black trees ahead—or are these only the footlights of the great stage whereon so many comedies, so many tragedies, and so many light farces, have been played?