The dance had begun, and we adjourned to the temple (1). Within it was a
drinking-saloon; and all around it was a broad circular platform for the dancers. I backed
up against the wall of the temple, and waited. Twenty sets formed, the music struck up,
and then--I placed my hands before my face for very shame. But I looked through my
fingers. They were dancing the renowned Can-can. A handsome girl in the set before me
tripped forward lightly to meet the opposite gentleman--tripped back again, grasped her
dresses vigorously on both sides with her hands, raised them pretty high, danced an
extraordinary jig that had more activity and exposure about it than any jig I ever saw
before, and then, drawing her clothes still higher, she advanced gaily to the center and
launched a vicious kick full at her vis_a_vis (2) that must infallibly have removed his
nose if he had been seven feet high. It was a mercy he was only six.
That is the Can-can. The idea of it is to dance as wildly, as noisily, as furiously as
you can; expose yourself as much as possible if you are a woman; and kick as high as you
can, no matter which sex you belong to. There is no word of exaggeration in this. Any of
the staid, respectable, aged people who were there that night can testify to the truth of
that statement. There were a good many such people present. I suppose French morality is
not of that strait-laced description which is shocked at trifles.
I moved aside and took a general view of the Can-can. Shouts, laughter, furious music,
a bewildering chaos of darting and intermingling forms, stormy jerking and snatching of
gay dresses, bobbing heads, flying arms, lightning flashes of white-stockinged calves and
dainty slippers in the air, and then a grand final rush, riot, a terrific hubbub, and a
wild stampede! Heavens! Nothing like it has been seen on earth since trembling Tam
O'Shanter saw the devil and the witches at their orgies that stormy night in Alloway's
auld haunted kirk (3).
We visited the Louvre . . . and looked at its miles of paintings by the old masters.
Some of them were beautiful, but at the same time they carried such evidences about them
of the cringing spirit of those great men that we found small pleasure in examining them.
Their nauseous adulation of princely patrons was more prominent to me and chained my
attention more surely than the charms of color and expression which are claimed to be in
the pictures. Gratitude for kindnesses is well, but it seems to me that some of those
artists carried it so far that it ceased to be gratitude, and became worship. If there is
a plausible excuse for the worship of men, then by all means let us forgive Rubens and his
brethren.
But I will drop the subject, lest I say something about the old masters that might as
well be left unsaid.
Of course we drove in the Bois de Boulogne, that limitless park, with its forests, its
lakes, its cascades, and its broad avenues. There were thousands upon thousands of
vehicles abroad, and the scene was full of life and gaiety. There were very common hacks
(4), with father and mother and all the children in them; conspicuous little open
carriages with celebrated ladies of questionable reputation in them; there were Dukes and
Duchesses abroad, with gorgeous footmen perched behind, and equally gorgeous outriders
perched behind, and equally gorgeous outriders perched on each o£ the six horses; there
were blue and silver, and green and gold, and pink and black, and all sorts and
descriptions of stunning and startling liveries out, and I almost yearned to be a flunkey
myself, for the sake of the fine clothes.
But presently the Emperor (5) came along and he outshone them all. He was preceded by a
body-guard of gentlemen on horseback in showy uniforms, his carriage-horses (there
appeared to be somewhere in the remote neighborhood of a thousand of them) were bestridden
by gallant-looking fellows, also in stylish uniforms, and after the carriage followed
another detachment of body-guards. Everybody got out of the way; everybody bowed to the
Emperor and his friend the Sultan, and they went by on a swinging trot and disappeared.
I will not describe the Bois de Boulogne. I cannot do it. It is simply a beautiful,
cultivated, endless, wonderful wilderness. It is an enchanting place. It is in Paris, now,
one may say, but a crumbling old cross in one portion of it reminds one that it was not
always so. The cross marks the spot where a celebrated troubadour was waylaid and murdered
in the fourteenth century (6). It was in this park that that fellow with an
unpronounceable name made the attempt upon the Russian Czar's life last spring with a
pistol (7). The bullet struck a tree. Ferguson (8) showed us the place. Now in America
that interesting tree would be chopped down or forgotten within the next five years, but
it will be treasured here. The guides will point it out to visitors for the next eight
hundred years, and when it decays and falls down they will put up another there and go on
with the same old story just the same.
